The Lazy Leopards
In the end it was like that,
all the things they said it would not be.
The people carefully cupped their hands over their eyes.
What was I to do?
Stand still?
O God—give strength to infirmity,
a voice like the void
out of no matter
no heart
and realization of firmer things.
Not death, the hardy recoverer,
but God, life under the grapevine.
I have walked so far,
hills into mountains,
mountains fallen flat like deserts
on their hands bruised with stones.
Life is like that, they say.
They!
The preachers of Christianity
pray!
God, you don’t want prayer—
no more than I want someone to beg from me.
Let them come and ask me.
O Jesus, your feet are in flame.
All this I realize.
Even the backward beginnings,
and the holes in our hearts,
and death with lead in it.
Ah, there is a hill,
covered with trees,
but the lazy leopards are in the fields.