Dismayed daily
by our capacity for violence,
how a desire for it seems
never to fade entirely
from our nature.

But it’s unreasonable
to expect that the children
of swords
will mature into ploughshares
on their own.

They are swords
as we are swords —
built to cut, built to spear
and shed, built to last
and to itch at all times for war.

There isn’t a moral here,
or at least
there’s no intended moral,
certainly nothing you could hang
a blacksmith’s hammer on.

You should probably just move along.
Hold your children tightly to you
and try to pretend they don’t feel like hilts
when you use them
in your war with Death.

Nothing to be done,
except it be done for you.

No world to save,
except it be saved for you.

The injustice you decry?
Only as what may be done to you.

The famine you wish away?
Only as it feels empty inside you.

What you love, what you hate,
what you protest — only what involves you.

How in particular you love or hate
or dismiss God?  Based only in what’s seen by you.

Is your pang for tuna-slain dolphins
not for how their absence will sadden you?

Is your scream for loss of polar ice
not just a cold reflection on how such loss cripples you?

Every day a track to you, every night a rail to you,
every breath a sweet cloud raining all for the growth of you.

I know you.  I know you, though I’ve not met you.
I know you and your infinite regard for you.

In the larger scheme of all there is and all the pain there is
there are worse things than to be taken up as a cause by you;

there are worse things,than being taken by you.
One could wake up one day and find oneself you,

empty of cause or idea except as offered to you
by all those waiting to see which will swallow you.