PILGRIM OF THE CHICKENS

A race, a creature superior among many,

Ruler from yawning abyss to lofty hill, from wide river to bare raven, the air and high seas, both tame under this one being,

A firm governor of beauty and foulness alike.

Looks and hearts neither fancied nor favoured, the splintered glass jar, of character uncouth and repute abraded and lost, unkindly judged, and then welcomed, from a severed murder sentence, a kind of hideous offence, 

or loudly cheered graduation, perhaps a wedding; no matter – the criminal does not flatter the crime, neither does the cake stroke the cream.

Good or bad, devils and angels from one cellar perfected by the same brewer.

I wondered and pondered years long before my youth, as I wonder now, how frail – if it is – the human spirit,

How delicate – if it is – the human soul,

For, where is the frailty in the life of a stripe whose mere living feeds on the stark oppression of a lesser creation – unfair this claim – and even of his own kind?

How delicate is a dweller if he should burn the grass off his own hut?

Though loved and cherished, my own children, in their innocence and peril, I strive to quench their thirst, foil their hunger from my toil of body and soul, and make myself a fair spring of laughter and cheer, yet a reluctant whip.

I ask myself who needs the other,

For, if not for them – my posterity – the fruit of my loins – I am neither father nor provider.

I am not their healer, they are mine, the reason for all my joys, the heavenly source of my frailties.

If in the eyes of man, earth would appear so beautifully innocent,

And in peril, and was loved as I love my children,

And they me, this debt we owe to nature would vanish.

It is not the beginning of the journey that counts, nor the arrival at the place longed for, but the balance of the leaps and bounds when you are finally free to return home,

But whose freedom, man’s or earth’s? The oppressor or the oppressed?

The pains and pleasures on earth’s voyage, on rocky landscapes void of green, of virgin meadow flowered and flattered, by a rare rose,

Pretty, aging petals starved of daybreak, the ancient sun tame and sulked.

While earth’s forehead longs for a bead of sweat, and then a yearning for rain, yet receiving none, deprived of both, an era plagued by shrinking seasons,

balding riverbanks and perishing seashores,

Every nation and every niche is awash with cheer,

At peace, unmoved by earth’s demise,

Riches and wealth, rubies and water, feasted off the fragile spine of Mother Nature!

While mankind takes with little giving, though I have seen no giving,

freely he takes, beast and lamb, freely he tames,

Reluctantly, I lay claim to this kinship,

This indecent race – called human!