Gregory Djanikian: Dark Wings

Now is the time to say

something for the animals 

felled by gunshot and broadax 

cluster bomb and bayonet

who have lain curled in their own blood 

without succor or consolation 

their flanks torn apart, 

their fibulas shattered,

the muscles of their rippled 

animal strengths untendoned, 

horses in their heavy tranquility,

dogs snuffling the marshy grass 

by river bank, by well-spring, 

the sleek, undaunted cats, the goats

meandering by olive groves 

without notion of bullet or 

impending boom of artillery, 

a hot sharp sting of pain

felt in the deepest folds 

where nothing, neither claw, nor tooth, 

nor talon, nor the brightest shoots

of light has ever reached

Gregory Djanikian, So I Will Till the Ground, 2007, Carnegie-Mellon University Press