Birdsong

I will not praise hands that strangle the neck

Of a bird for wanting to sing, for being at the beck

And call of the great Mother, the cosmic sky.

Nor will I weep over blanched graves, wonder why

The good had to die, when I have swallowed

The rhetoric long enough to become hollowed,

To be a vessel for tears that will drench the soil

And poison the waters until beauty is turmoil.

.

I will not feel pity for the man with his gun

When at last his war is done and still not won.

So the mirror shows his truth, so he weeps,

So the gun is turned to his own teeth, so he leaps.

I will not grieve the passing of a broken pawn

When the King smiles upon another golden dawn

Because this is little more than a game of cruelty,

Something old without change, no fucking novelty.

.

I will not kill the songbird thrown into my cage

Because its piercing trill is one of endless rage.

I will beat the pattern of its pain into the bedrock

Until the ugly elite, the blood-bathers, no longer mock

The ghosts moving through the cemeteries

Weeping with sullied love for their adversaries!

The dead spread their grief through the bird's beak

And still the institutions hope they don't speak.