
With A Lion In My Cry
I come to you today
With a heron on my shoulder
With a jaguar in my eye
With a monkey in my laugh
With a lizard in my look
With a fish in every whisper, I come to you.
I come to you today
With a flower in my mouth
With a snake around my waist
With a cougar in my care
With a kitten in my touch
With a pig in every wish, I come to you.
I come to you today
With a rabbit in my leap
With a bull in my desire
With a leopard in my heart
With a lamb in my delight
With a lion in my cry, I come to you, I reach for you,
I reach for you and hold you dear
Until such time
As loving teaches us
How each of us must finally
Die. Then how we tremble, oh my darling,
How we blossom on that day.
How we gather all together.
How we mingle: How we fly!

Sailing into Oblivion
Whenever death decides to come
Then let her come as a noisy woman
Street wise Opinionated Fast talking
And brash enough To carry me off
In a flood of foul language.
Or let her come as a lively and familiar friend
Wearing a smile and bearing in her hands
A bowl of ripe yellow peaches
Bleeding juices in the sun.
Or let her come as a singer of songs
A boy A girl
A troubadour A troublemaker
A maker of nothing
A game A toy.
Or let her come
As a maker of fine boats,
Like the poet Li-Po,
Who more than thirteen hundred years ago
Would write his verses out
On bits of paper,
Then shape the paper
Into tiny boats And set them on the water
Just to watch them
Float away.
The Art of War
When the planes came over
Cain was lying on his bed / half-asleep / unshaven
In the boarding house
You know the scene / I know you do / the movie set The seedy room in black and white
The sheets all wet from sweating bread
The TV on / the cigarette.
When the bombs began to fall
He was standing by the window
In the rockets red glare
And oh / the skies / amazing / blazing
Hey, you know the song / I know you do
The children dying / blah blah blah
The fields of wheat consumed by fire
The shadows blistered on the street.
But this is Cain / you understand? / the man himself
Is standing by the window
Staring down at burning children
Running through a storm of metal
Manufactured in a tongue
They never learned at school.
He suddenly remembers
How his younger brother Abel / fell beneath the blows Beside the bloody altar / on that awful day of sacrifice.
The sky is empty now and silent
Oh / but every mother knows
Tomorrow is another day of dying in the town.
Standing at the window / staring out
At body parts and bits of bone / the bloody stool
You know the scene / the President
And then of course / commercial breaks
When suddenly / the Son of Man /
His weary face / reflected in the window pane
He cries aloud: What have I done?
What have I done? he cries again. What have I done?