Oh, we have lost our involvement!

Don't you deny either that our workings in whirlwinds
are ways along a torn road where our crumblings
scatter like new dust from urns. I have seen your
labor devoid of pleasure, and know the tools you
cherish are not your own.

A speed of cars with human hearts
could drown the blood on the streets,
and a halt of prison stuffed with men who move
could not rot the crimes a driver keeps
behind his oil light, beneath his hood.

What motion seems picture-sane
in this cobbled crippled heap?
A flash of a knife, the arc of a gun,
a violent show-down on a motionless
screen?

Or perhaps
a honied lamb with golden wool and curls
who cherishes the grass it eats, the
flock it meets, and the razor edge
that makes it butcher's meat?

Oh, we have lost our involvement!

The truth we mourn lies in sandy dunes,
shifting with flourishes of acrid wind.
But its not the ripples, the color of land,
nor even an old camel tooth.
Its not the desert, nor the sun, which
meet each other like two simple hands.
Its not the moon set in the black above,
its not the oasis, though like a jewel,
seems set by love. Its not the dew
of one-time rain, its not the howling
old refrains, its the simple and speckled
grains that with no rhyme nor reason
continue to remain.

Oh we have lost our involvement!

Give me Lorca's green guitar
on which to sprinkle our sand,
give me Laura's red violin
on which to notice our hands.
Give me Robert's yellow clarinet
on which to mark our land.
Give me Melissa's blue flute
on which to play our stand.
Give us instruments painted red white or blue
give us a piano the color of the moon,
give us a lute like a comet or two,
for you have taken
what little music we have made with our hands.