The Others

And what loss, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
Where did it lead thy feet?

What of the desert and thy pain?
In what furnace devoured thy rain?
What of those teeth and bellies empty
That dared their terrors upon a land of plenty?

When the men threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did heaven smile its work to see?
Smile at the Tiger, smile at thee?

Once a dream did weave a shade
Over a thought that did forbade,
That a Tiger would deprive her hour;
Within a dream she would devour.

Troubled, hungry, and forlorn,
Dark, thirsty, travel-worn,
Overlooking a desolete bay,
Her heart-broke, I heard her say:

"Oh my children! do you cry,
Do you hear your father sigh?
Now you look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me."

Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a Devil near,
Who asked, "What wailing blight
Calls thy watchmen of the night?

"I am set to clear the ground,
Of the body the fly has found:
Follow now your dreams away;
Little wanderer, live the day!"

"Pity exists evermore,
Only to make the Tiger poor;
And mercy no more could there be,
If the Tiger were to live as thy."

The Tiger's loss brings the peace,
Till the selfish love does increase;
Upon when cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with loving care.

The stranger begins with holy fears,
And waters the ground with mothers' tears,
His humanity lost in blood and flies,
His humanity found in books and lies.

The land that knew the Tiger's feet;
Conceiled beneath the tarmac street,
Water that once ebbed and flowed;
Now pumped over earth that's sewed.

The cogs of the factory's mind
Turn to make the dreaming blind;
Shaping their earth towards the sky;
Hardening souls that want to cry,

So the souls build the bridge of deceit,
To give cold and warm a place to meet,
And here the lost tribes learn to feel;
Upon the support of hardened steel.

The bridge of the earth and sea,
Spanned nature to make us free,
But our bridge was all in vain;
The other side shared the pain.

About the poet/painter