Sing to Fish, Embrace the Beast

Sing to fish, embrace the beast, But don't get up from the pond With half your body a horse's body Or wings from your backbone. Sleep as a man beside the sleeping wolves Without longing for a special sky To darken and fur your hands. Animals, do not kill for the human heart Which under breasts of scale or flesh will cry. O swallow, be a heart in the wind's high breast, River the limbs of the sky with your singing blood. The dead are beginning to breathe: I see my father splashing light like a jewelIn the swamp's black mud.