So this is what love gets you in the end.
Too many bodies round the table crowd
Till limbs reach forward with no room to bend.
Mouths with no food to fill them cry aloud.

We're always born into a sloppy mess,
Blood runs thick because water's priced too dear.
It would be easier to love the less,
In larger rooms with fewer kindred near.

But there's no chance to stay in narrow bounds.
Not even pressed up close against the wall
By tiny feet producing raucous sounds.
In spite of everything, one cares for all.

It will take risks to grow. This much, they saw.
To save this son is to break free from law.


To save this son is to break free from law.
But there are many sons whose light is spent.
It's too much work to protest or to jaw
And yet, glimpsing how all his clothes are rent...

Why lay your life down for one lying down?
He's useless, can't even be moved to hobble.
There are no stirrings, rolling through the town,
Not even groans from bumping over cobble.

Whatever rapturous love pangs he might feel
Could not dissuade him from the deadly blast.
Only another sort of love-still real-
Stood by him to defend him to the last,

Love for a stranger overcoming might.
The stars shield all of them, into the night.


The stars shield all of them, into the night,
While words are shot across the open space.
Freedom and civic duty, wrong and right,
The slow-won progress of the human race.

It's easier to lift up humankind
When kindness and humanity can link
Within a single form, a single mind
Who thinks it all-sufficient to go think.

The struggle isn't meant for total ease
But there are whispered moments they can share,
And in the silent unity of these
Liberation and more seems plenty fair.

With joint philosophy this guiding star,
A brilliance reflects across the bar.


A brilliance reflects across the bar.
Mirrored by transparent glass, and echoed? No.
It scatters, again signalling how far
The true believers' message has to go.

Humanity's on none-too-proud display,
Stopped in its tracks by that love that distracts,
And claims the name of love, as if to say
That it alone is love, and hinders acts.

It chafes to think that everyone must change,
Abandon childish faiths for grown-up whimsy,
Faced with this false consensus, one feels strange,
All other loves ignored or seen as flimsy.

What good's a son, a fellow-human, friend?
So this is what love gets you in the end.