Feathers burn so easily, the cat is blinded in the garden, last vision the lark is flame
The cattle shed gives off the smell of sunday kitchen, the gentle eye, the dispensable perfection
Before the flash takes two weeks' food, pile the sacks of earth and hide All of us here know it, we grew it
Fighting amongst ourselves, leaving bits of flesh on barbed wire, a little blood on the floor
Locks and bars across the door, well versed in violation, our children beat each other in the garden
Our failure to accept the earth, we talk of love but push it to the edge Push it to the edge
This is no natural aggression composing death, I am afraid for beauty when I see the fist,
The perfect hand that turns against itself, the perfect hand that holds a gun or wields a butcher's blade, or leads to death,
Leads to death the used-up bull or incarcerates the hopeless fool or takes the forest with a single flame
Leaves the nest an empty shell Human kind condemns the hunting beast yet their own choice leaves behind such ragged meat
The military dream of blood, their sweet wine flowing in the veins of men who work towards our bloody end
They fly Enola gaily, give birth to this waiting waiting, give us the reality of our hatred, give the earth nothing
Melting, goats dead on the green, dying lambs bleating by the wire three last days on the earth, I lay down to die in the grass