Cannibals of Animals and Ideas

Terrible terrible, the clang of the pipe, the drying plants in pots, concrete button holes,
Turrets, nooses, scaffolds of the cross now shaggy from the beards of moss
As from a great Oak in its dying grandeur.
No shortage deep enough for attention to pass unguarded, unwatched,
As at the local council meeting, all endorse raises for themselves and
Prison sentences for the rest, the rabble, the people,
Unable to pay attention to inanity, they pray the way the Babushka does,
With worried hands and honey, with torn flour sacks and clothes for baby
made from burlap bags.

Old Grandmother, you brought us here to a country of thieves
Protected by weary conscience and the morals of the conquerors
Fattening on victory.
You brought us here clean as a window, wet as rain, strong as woman and man
Riding on a train.

The land before us is the land after, mashed up like a pushed rug
Mixing with the leavings of calcite and the shallow sea.
I bore the tracks of disputed plans and all were to apply equally
To the shooting squad and the academic office of the high tower.
Blessed be the lambs in the field.
Hot is the sand between your toes, the roughed in color of the voice,
The tableau of impermanence and wanting, left wanting
At the little table where the scriveners earned their pay,
Where the stains of the hand made cup and the hollows of the bowl
Share as steamy broth might borrow from earth her hair of grain,
Her loss of mirth in the girth of wealth and
The haphazard death of barefoot field hands and factory boys
Smirched and barefoot among the metal walls and peeled shavings
Where safety harnesses and handles are but straps hung from hooks
On hay wagons and telephone poles.

Judas nation working the morse code to tell where hidden mutineers put their ship.
They stashed their stuff before a rising tide, on an island of misfit toys,
Washed the sea clean of words and evidence of all the gifts poorly given,
The guilt and sin on the hands of man.
His little daughter and granddaughter weeping openly
As the Moors and Christians once marked innocent houses with “X’s” for fire and
Sacks of stuff were thrown on the street like the yellow hay and the
Red bright pattern of skirts with saffron crosses and pockets of gold.
You gave us this?

All away as the animals give life, unknowing,
Striving for the experience of soaring and running in fields
Where jasmine scents the stream with fallen blossoms from her tender heart.
The ripening fruit holds to its tiny sluice of nutrient exchange with air and water.
The grass hair of the ground is her little under belly,
A pooch of tender longing,
A little fat for hunger’s balance and the press of necessity,
The shaping hand of need that yet must forget grief
As the greater store of the golden age behind
and the coming star as light in her eye
In the twilight lifted
As the plate offering up what we left for the Gods as a bribe.

A sum for our passage, a ship far from shore as
The refugee paddling with his hands in the warm water that reddens
As a bloom of algae secretes its own transformation
Starving even the ocean’s depth of its oxygen needed for next generations,
Themselves starving, potted, looking up like a sickly yellow Winter
Where the apartment dwellers had to flea their lease and
As with corners and scattered newspaper,
The detritus of leaves and droppings still needs to be cleaned.
The bread still needs to be leavened, the brass polished,
Victory declared that we may eat what became of the survivors.