contralto scratchy with
the Lord's diseases :
Philip,
I want to die.
I wish I had them all
gathered round, those ministers, bishops,
rabbis, popes, TV
evangelists, faith healers,
gurus, ayatollahs,
every freak and fraud
on God's payroll, and I
would pull the sheets
from my mother's brittle body
and every holy shill
in that room would be
struck blind, and they
would fall on their knees at that bedside
to be forgiven all their faith.
Mario Luzi
AND THE WOLF
When the ice creaks and animals in fear
on the banks look at the tumbling seas
and drifting icebergs
and harpooned sharks quiver and die
and eager to give life the wasting salmon
buck the torrential flow
and the wolf
with an anguish that's his
his ancestors' his cubs'
thus torn at heart
