22

Why am I dismissed and scorned?
Day and night I sing like heralds
Remembered and heeded: they were men.

But I'm a worm: a cock in a circle
Blinded by a ring of headlights,
Deafened by horns and the bettor's cry.

Since my mother's womb was opened
I was laid to suckle, tasting sweetly
The only milk, which they despise, saying:

"Who will come to save him now
"That talons have punctured his ribs
"And his bones can be counted dust?"

Though my hands and feet are pierced,
Though my tongue sticks like a fetus,
My bowels a heart of molten wax,

Bone from the joint, cloth from the corpse:
These are the things that they wage for
But not for what lived within them.

The song I live as I live and pass,
The passion of seed set in loam, not
Mine to have, to have alone, nor theirs to keep

But a seed on loan to propagate
Successive generations that recall and sing
That some men sang and lived by song.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998