A Tethered Goat

Tethered to a pillar of / ignorance / I am an animal / that can only go round / and then turn back to go / round again. / The bomb blasts stop / me in my tracks. I do not understand / much of today’s psychology / or its lactating mother / they chose to call philosophy. / I cannot bring myself / to hurt one to whom / I was not introduced. / I cannot feel the hate / so much in vogue today, / I am somebody’s pet, / an outdated plaything / now abandoned for time / to step in, and in / a leisurely way destroy. / I am the goat / who in hunger ate / Pluto’s Republic, / Kalidasa’s Shakuntata, / Gurdjieff’s analysis / of his own cult / and, of course, Walt Whitman’s / Leaves of Grass. / I do not qualify / as wholesome meat / for the butchers / who come by surveying the scene. / I look as sickly / as sickness itself can be, / none would want to eat me / for dinner. / This I consider a boon / in this century of / bigotry, arms’ bazaars / and haphazard killings...