PRAYER BEFORE WAR
March 2001

O Sunlike beings, do not kill us all!
Leave one hermit undisclosed,
leave one linen undefiled,
leave one soul undeparted,
open-eyed, yet undaunted.
Leave a streak of vim and pain,
once forgotten that was planted,
to grow a sun-worm once again.

By what famine we learnt so far
that rivers flood, the sea is barred.
I never doubted or tore off, faithful,
the love for hunger, the anchor of plenty.
No more fathers, no land to stand on,
exposed and barren as a winter wrong.

My charred soil rises
in an ungrazed hill:
the grass does not know me,
the hail pelts on still.
Yet the heart, though a desert,
yearns for a final gesture:
the left palm in the storm,
the right into the pasture -
Now doom can come
and humble my skin,
smash all the dams,
bury the proud foundling.
The insatiable tide
is coming for its kin,
to destroy and divide,
though nothing is to win.

Mighty Ones, who love us
beyond our emptied graves,
leave two lovers,
leave a bed.
Leave a shelter,
a calm palm-spread.
O Shiny Ones,
leave us all!
To live and die as tales
humble and meekly told.
Leave our loves to unfold.
And then, appeased,
We'll leave alone.