DESIRE FOR MORE COWS
				    
Words and bullets, too fast to understand, 
words forged into facts so strategically 
we hold true to them, oh Flag, oh Peace, oh Liberty. 
  
We eat War 
like a chicken sandwich, drink War 
like a Pepsi; 
  
packaged for us, 
War is anti-war, is destroying 
Iraq's ability to make war, destroying 
  
Korea's, Vietnam's, Somalia's, Nicaragua's, Haiti's, Granada's 
desire for more, killing 
this killing 
  
because a civilized society 
does not eat war 
unless it is not. 
  
And words, shrink-wrapped words 
can break mountains like eggs, 
the right words can open their mouths to speak 
  
and whole boulders and shanties tumble in, plant fire 
in the spring and wait 
for harvest. 
  
123 Internet websites, countless newspaper tidbit- 
jumbles, and cocktail party wits tell us 
the Sanskrit word for "war" translates to "Desire for more cows." 
  
They probably mean this word 
I can't pronounce 
or even spell 
  
which an expert tells me "the wish 
for cows/bulls" is not one of the usual 
words for war or even among the thirty-one 
  
words given in the Amarakosa for war 
and I say Wow! 
even though I wouldn't know 
  
an Amarakosa from a new rival for the Big Mac, 
even though I can't pronounce it, 
can't even spell. 
  
Maybe that word once stood for war 
in a time when thievery and five knives made battle, 
a time so far beyond us its words almost extinguish. 
  
Oh Pride, oh Desire, 
how you can move us!  Oh cows 
beyond my fences, cows beyond these shores, 
  
do you see 
beyond us 
the cracks written in air? 
  
Do you hear voices shouting: 
War!  God!  Cows! 
as loud as that boy in the fields who used to cry, Wolf! 
  
You pretend to study nothing 
in particular as you watch 
us move.