Sentimental (White Feathers)

Feathers burn so easily, the cat is blinded in the garden, 
last vision the lark is flame.
The cattle shed gives off the smell of sunday kitchen, the 
gentle eye, the dispensable perfection.
Before the flash takes two weeks' food, pile the sacks of 
earth and hide. All of us here know it, we grew it.
Fighting amongst ourselves, leaving bits of flesh on barbed
 wire, a little blood on the floor.
Locks and bars across the door, well versed in violation, 
our children beat each other in the garden.
Our failure to accept the earth, we talk of love but push 
it to the edge. Push it to the edge.
This is no natural aggression composing death, I am afraid 
for beauty when I see the fist,
The perfect hand that turns against itself, the perfect 
hand that holds a gun or wields a butcher's blade, or leads
 to death,
Leads to death the used-up bull or incarcerates the 
hopeless fool or takes the forest with a single flame
Leaves the nest an empty shell. Human kind condemns the 
hunting beast yet their own choice leaves behind such 
ragged meat.
The military dream of blood, their sweet wine flowing in 
the veins of men who work towards our bloody end.
They fly Enola gaily, give birth to this waiting... 
waiting, give us the reality of our hatred, give the earth 
nothing.
Melting, goats dead on the green, dying lambs bleating by 
the wire... three last days on the earth, I lay down to die
 in the grass.