Coyote Brood

Lew Sarett

COYOTE BROOD

What a bewildering world is yours, wild brood,

Cringing before the north wind's sullen mood,

And squirming as your mother's pink wet tongue

Licks the bedraggled fur of her new-born young.

Such eyes!-that come from darkness into day

Blinking and blinded by every sun-split ray,

Perplexed before the catastrophes of earth

That stalk you from the moment of your birth.

So overwhelmed by night, so round with wonder

When storm-clouds roll their drums in crashing thunder

To summon you, like a smiting challenge hurled,

To the battle for survival in this world.

Your span shall hold no respite from the pain

Of racking hunger, of stinging sleet and rain,

No loveliness but a moment of delight

Snatched in the sun or furtive in the night.

Goaded by fear that prods you like a knife,

Oh, not for you the complacencies of life;

Harried by belching steel and pitiless traps,

Your fondest hope is but a grim perhaps.

Into the world bewildered you were thrust,

To struggle bewildered with hate, disaster, lust;

Out of the world, defeated, driven, low,

To benevolent earth bewildered you will go.