These wolves are no companions
For those who sing in the silence.
They do not light candles in holly bushes,
Or gaze through sweet-draped windows.
The rattle of bones and chains
Is not the rattle of good-news-horses.
And no children run, gleefully greeting.
No, these loups
lope silent
Alone in the strong dark forest,
Through caves of old hidden hatreds,
The tunnels under the heart.
They pant with their fetid longing
To shatter false innocence.
Their names are older than memory,
Twisted through chains of language,
And those who doubt their power
Have never smelled blood on snow;
Have never beheld the horror
When life turns inside out.
We can trace the slot of their running
Through the dry river beds of thought,
When emotion has been dammed.
(Damned, dammed and damned)
They howl in slippery winds
Through our full-mooned disappointments
And we recoil in horror
From the doorways of our rage.
We are passion’s fools.
Helpless unless the angels
Shut up the mouths of the beasts
In the place of our praying.
And the truth shall set us free.
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