Prairies

Prairies

november 1982

jp melville

To hell with your world and what’s in it.

When I need sleep I’ll take for a bed a small space.

When I am hungry I will take my food what’s there.

Of clothes I need little.

I will follow my dreams, my whims, my fancy,

Have no shackling chains,

So when I have love

Love shall flow free

Nor accept no bonds in return.

No institution, no people’s law, no matrimony

Shall confine me,

Bound by tradition to provide

Security.

Look:

A mundane home,

Wages, salaries,

We are all confidants to credit despotic,

Material bulk, mistresses to fashion,

Even goals and amusements just a soul’s anaesthetic

Leading deep into your pit

Diverging me from I.

Aha!

To say goodbye to one and hello to another!

Once the world has turned round full

Step again, dance again,

Sing for the spirits of change

Accompany us to tomorrow,

New dawn, new light, challenge

What lies beyond my threshold!

Oh ecstasy of freedom!

Of freedom!

Take to the prairies

The woods, the hills, the mountains, the lakes, rivers, streams

Where freedom reigns,

For I knew once freedom in the prairies

Where yet we have yet defiled land

Where earth smells intoxicate me

Where wind sweeps through my hair

And your breath

And your blood

Sky passing clouds from here to nowhere

Land, thoughts, dust….

On distant horizons my prairies

Beckon me forever

To listen to the calling

In my our to hell with your world and what's in it.