free-verse13 lines
Reflecting upon a Human Lung in Alcohol
by Alfred LichtensteinWithout horror you devour dead flesh every day.
And dead blood is a sweet syrup for you.
Aren't you afraid? -
Indeed your earliest fathers also had,
And before you awoke,
Crammed thousands of the dead into your body.
However, how deeply frightened must the first person who killed
An animal have been -
Because, when he saw that what roamed about,
What could jump and cry out and in the moment of death
Still could watch the beseeching world,
In a moment
Was not there.