Makeshift Heart XVI: Widow Wildlife

 

 

 

 

See her out with her husband in cool early scrub
A couple easily composed, inconceivable man on foot
Two legs four legs six legs eight
Don’t speed up don’t hesitate.

See him with his little brother standing as they do
Wind rushing without a ruffle
Purposeless society breeding when it has to
They are the same as us from far enough.

Our busy thoughts steer us from the fact
As from more family now dead everywhere
As from our compulsive clasp
As from animality.

I want what I want and so cannot decide
What’s best for me in this cloud of me-ness
To want what you want is just as decisionless
It’s a form of automation long ago perfect

Where navigation’s as irrelevant as vital.

So hurtling along it’s a brother I once saw grazing
Pumping benzine it’s onto widow wildlife
Opening my fridge I don’t feel bees hold it shut
Radicals travel barefoot, genius sings in a tree.

Explain to the widow how we are free we are free we are free
To choose is to want except to choose not to choose
From the pile in front of me is reward free
Only uncertain uncertainty: a pain and unknown good.

He and I spring from joint stock, complain the same fart, burn joules
She and I live in our burrows compelled to what pleases us, mostly
Satisfied to perform routines going back to a tube with a hole each end
Joyfully singing simple ritual completing each other because we must

And yet I am careless of it. What I prize is penumbra of a lisp of a wiggle
Giving time to the flickering modern and sophistical beard clips
Giving the day I could change everything away out of petulance
Giving what I really want to the boring person who got up daily and did it.

The gun is in his hand, lost child.

An angel lost his life today because I measured the easy get,
A treat cost me my conscience. Were I kinder I’d leave
Were I right I would merely do right, but the truth is I am happy
Cannot stay miserable for long. The solution is a distraction

Shame it can’t believe in me.