I keep a deer’s surviving heart inside my chest
And try to hide this heart of his away from him
A kind of favour done to confiscate his fears
He would have lost all of his mind
He already lost his way
There in the middle of the road
In the headlights and hooting of vehicles
Horns and harness running amok
As the herd of the holocaust
Hell-bound as well
He is about to die
He knows he is
I cannot help him
He cannot much for me alike
For heaven’s sake, if not for his,
What on earth is he expecting
There in the middle of the road
Outside his forest?
Couldn’t he stay around his peers?
With his sisters and brotherhood
His friends and rivals, even his enemies
They care for him with familiar fancy
And fight with him in familiar fury
But in the middle of the road
Death deludes the deer with alien faces
Its track is not betrayed in trails or traces
Beasts with rolling eyes, white,
And roars of rage from missing mouths
Farting with sulphurous fumes
He should freeze, he already did
Maybe he can live to be a roundabout
A totem circled by the zealot pilots’ dance
In whirls of wheels and gyres round pyres
Powwows warlocks wage for wasted worship
That invokes the malign they assume as divine
From praying by pretence of priests or prophets
They will be granted the grace, as far as folly goes,
Of such a prize as gifts to guy and pretty preys
At times a rain to let roast or fish to turn foul
Now a deer for sheer demise and jeers
Whatever a man or machine or a mix
Holds as holy, and a matter of manna and miracles
Therefore, let him try and stand for safety
Awhile wearing a life suited to stealth statues
The price you pay indeed to be alive today
And yet he knows he won’t survive
You can feel it too, in forced relief confessions feed,
When it comes to lives of yours or mine
Warned with hindsight by a spellbound hunch
Or left unknowing, like a ghost upon its grave,
By our acumen alas in cahoots with our doom
Everybody has to die from time to time
Perhaps before you are from spirits born
And then again to claim a hero’s fame
At last we die for good, or bad excuses,
To prove we’ve been, it’s hard to say,
But yes, in earnest, useless all along
That’s the way our lives will go away
Mine at least, not assuming yours,
Always close to catching up that glass
That’s bound to slip because, like an apple,
Misfortune has the weight of gravity
In attractions of any disaster to grief
And so our fate is falling like a ritual
To some it feels as if it’s fine romance
Yet in the middle of the road, to the deer,
Death is hardly something sentimental
It’s enough to make a small misstep
A motion not in tune, too soon or too slow,
And to ashes he burns as the lamb at the stake
Like a wayward poem, maybe mine, can break
If the rhythm is rushed ahead of hearts
The deer, the heart of whom is mine,
Although mortal, also knows eternal truths
Aware of all the worries, waiting for worse,
He exclaims, Let me live!
Why should men dictate my destiny
Let me straighten stronger nerves
And keep in mind the parting line
Splitting highways into both my sides of death
Alive on tiptoes I foresee a truce in traffic
Surely man will lack some gas or sleep
Right then I’ll be rushing out of here
Back to my fantasies, if not the forest,
With the miseries missing the medicine
Known to the merciful rivals or relatives
It never came to me to be the rebel kind
Mocking myths with maths and measures
My steps beyond our frames and frontiers,
Welcome or woeful, were unwanted whims
May this be a lesson taught to reckless minds
All of us should stay away from morbid lights
Greatest elders, look at me before the judgment
I am not a hero, not a bold explorer either
But the errands man arranges cross our paths
Their roads deride and rip and rape our realm
Like a snake that’s sneaking into godlike gardens
But I don’t care about their complications
The tree of life, the tree of science
In a forest of faith or a forest of fiends
And the mystics imagined as men
The students and scholars of sainthood
In love with the letter, aloof from the spirit
Selling love for laws, sealing laws from lies
But the One that showed the way
Embodied both the life and truth
Above the choice between our errors
Deaf to discourses about the dilemmas
Distinguishing the holy from the saintly
I will trust the tranquil triumph of truth
Resurrected
Indeed for a rendezvous over a rainbow
From the remnants of man and the relics of God
So I like all life, and even those alive
And I am fond of wildest forests
However, wary of wonderful words,
I acknowledge all the trees inside
All my wisdom, for what it’s worth,
Comes from customs which command
I should try to be a simple-minded soul
It keeps at bay deceitful doubts or dogmas
The fads of odd ideas the idiots idolise
Add to this, the circus starring clever clowns
My heart is simple too, matching the mind,
And I would give it all to you
Paltry poet, raving in verse, the veneer of an art
Love now, loved man, with a saint’s sincere heart
Keep it safe, make the best of it
This immaculate heart of a deer
If not the least of all for me
Then for the freaks and the friends
This heart will make of you
And all the flows of fellows and followers
One of the freest and fathomless folks of the forest of deers