Tuesday, May 20, 2008

A cat looks up from his slumber













Awakening to the world as the world awakens to it.
An Aegean blue, a sphinx-like yellow
Tawny and sulfurous
In the hot cinder of light and paling cool of shadow.
He is of multitude of names, therefore nameless.
He knows of existence, the place of things, through kindness,
His place in the world fixed by scraps of mercy and bones,
A nibble here, there,
The dust alone ignorant and deaf to his importuning.
What do we see, looking at it?
What predilection for life, what predilection for being,
Charity, empathy and beneficence?
What infirmities waiting to beset us,
What futures, what limitation of resources,
The last straw on the sullied fur of the planet's back,
What failings of nation-states, tender hearts, what wars
Superpower-junkies itching for the final slimy patinas of their subsistence
Will fight?
Or do we see a blurred beauty of our own reckoning,
Born of the earth and subsistent on it the dust of our creation,
Our wounds, our scars, our overbite,
The soft purrings of our desire and our pleasure,
Our two fierce eyes blue and yellow which could see through souls
To a heart of things nameless and awake, always?

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