“
whenever two people kiss the world is born,
a drop of light with guts of transparency
the room like a fruit splits and begins to open
or burst like a star among the silences
and all laws now rat-gnawed and eaten away,
barred windows of banks and penitentiaries,
the bars of paper, and the barbed-wire fences,
the stamps and the seals, the sharp prongs and the spurs,
the one-note sermon of the bombs and wars,
the gentle scorpion in his cap and gown,
the tiger who is the president of the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty and the Red Cross,
the pedagogical ass, and the crocodile
set up as saviour, father of his country,
the founder, the leader, the shark, the architect
of the future of us all, the hog in uniform,
and then that one, the favourite son of the Church
who can be seen brushing his black teeth
in holy water and taking evening courses
in English and democracy, the invisible
barriers, the mad and decaying masks
that are used to separate us, man from man,
and man from his own self
they are thrown down
for an enormous instant and we see darkly
our own lost unity, how vulnerable it is
to be women and men, the glory it is to be man
and share our bread and share our sun and our death,
the dark forgotten marvel of being alive;
”
”