imbecile body, exigent, weeping clown:
if I could cast you down I would, and be
a grub, and bore beneath the tunnelled bark
of some forsaken, fallen, distant tree,
wordless and dark in the safe soft wood.
imbecile body, wingless, dreaming drone:
if I could leave these bones then I would go
and fold my fragile feelers in a shell
glued to some worthless chunk of rock, and so
in the long salt swell exist, and eat, and die.
imbecile body, that says it has a soul:
if I cannot control this ceaseless whine
for more than life, I had been better so:
invertebrate, immune to Thing and Mine,
wanted by no one, wanting nothing: peace.
-- GPL 1988 D. A. Clarke