Nature’s Way

Your rose is withered and forlorn

Can nothing save its blackened thorn?

I recommend a cure that will -

Selected works of Kim Jong Il!

A reading every noon and night

Will radically change its plight

And where before the petals fell

New buds will soon begin to swell

Iranian Uranium

Is best for your geranium

And if it’s still a little sad

An hour of Ahmedinajad

Recorded live in Isfahan

And via Turkish Kurdistan,

Is guaranteed to bring it round

And make a difference most profound

But for an even healthier glow

Try ‘Hizbollah’s Magic Multigrow’

Resist the gardener’s common urge

To fault each autocratic purge

In countries whose political slants

Will likely cheer your garden plants

For nature is, beneath the sun

At root, totalitarian

To those who loathe the scorpions whip

And criticise dictatorship

In Pyongyang, Burma or Khartoum

I say…‘Let a hundred flowers bloom’!

Go

Go

This is no womb

And you are

no cherished issue

Your only future lies

out there

To join your brethren

the Sirocco, the Pampero

and the great Typhoon

Be under no illusion

You were never welcome here

And your continued presence

will not long be tolerated

Yet even in your going you must

show caution

For in this crowded city there are some

who would resent your passing

Like thoughtful Telemachus you must

leave quietly!

You have the power

to fuel a conflagration

Yet, I ask you: let go completely

No petty lingering whines

No thundering explosion

You need not make a scene

Hot air is quickly gone

But you have the pneuma

the destiny

if you will only grasp it

to reach the highest heavens

Here in this tense confinement

they show you nothing but contempt

Look at their wrinkled noses

when they notice

just a hint of your presence.

Go

Speed on to distant altitudes

For in swift currents

you can at last be one

with the very furies of the skies.