Towards the end of this books, I started
writing poems which sounded to me
somewhat different than the ones I'd been writing before.
They were shorter.
Often the sentences are shorter.
And in almost all of them although not all of them,
either a heart or a lion or sometimes both seem to appear.
And so I'll read you a few of those
and then move into the next book, which obviously since it's
called The Lives of the Heart, this obsession continued
to carry on.
This is the first one of them that arrived.
It's called "The Weigh-in."
The heart's reasons seen clearly.
Even the hardest will carry its whip marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.
As the drought-starved eland forgives the drought-starved
lion who finally takes her, enters willingly, then,
the life she cannot refuse and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.
So few grains of happiness measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
The world asks of us only the strength we have,
and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.