SENTIMENT


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 take two weeks’ food, 
Pile the sacks of earth and hide.
All of us here know it, 
We grew with 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.
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 the used-up bull 
Or incarcerates the hopeless fool 
Or takes the forest with a single flame 
And leaves the nest an empty shell.
Human kind condemns the hunting beast yet his 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 thereality of our hatred, give the earth nothing.
Melting, goats dead on the green, 
Dying lambs bleating by the wire...three last days on earth, 
I lay down to die in the grass.

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