The lion does not lie down with the lamb, no.

The paw at the end of his mind slashes once,

And a small life bloodies the peaceable kingdom,

But not enough smear to cover the difference.

Where lion is, a curly woolen lamb is dead.

My children are furies, but not kin playmates

To sliding adders, or tiger with the big head.

I had seven goldfish once that could not read,

And rode a horse, rich-coated, biddable, fast,

But a horse. They taught me my counter-fable.

I kept a seagull fed for weeks, but felt nearest

When it was seagull most, and flew away.

I imagined myself into the real life of cat,

Pig, and pup, for a small part of any day.

I knew a woman like a leopard, supple and striped,

And lay down with her, skin to skin. She tore

The thinking off my ribs, cloud out of my eyes.

I knew a shambler once, a man like a grizzly bear,

Awkward on his hind feet, a Brutus under the hat.

I had also for teacher a gaudy parrot or loon

I thought of awhile as a woman, but stopped that.

If a lynx in my fable has his arm round my lamb,

I shoot, to kill. Or windmill at him with a club,

In a game of beating his bones into the ground.

Nor does my fable say people are animals curbed.

I teach the children that people are women and men

Whose blue eyes and warm hands, whose voices,

Brains, and sex, can kill, they cannot guess when.

The old obsessed painter turned me foolish, too,

The damnation of being left to myself by a liar,

Till my hands remembered the woman was woman-smooth,

That after the heavy-overcoated man I was poor.

I comfortable have not known till late I am

Not in a war. I am a war of love and unlove.

And how no lion ever lay down with a lamb.