based on An Ox Looks at Man by Carlos Drummond De Andrade

They stone stumble tender feet over earth.
They are aimless tracks. They backtrack
for more. More machines. More meals. More
more. They forget what they’ve left,
how to paw-pad the land,
how to savor its billowed scent.

They’ve grown past their senses.
They sniff pine needles without listening
to the tree’s evergreen speech. They never
see the glaze sap leaves when we move
along. As if tenderness – which is the medicine
in its needle – would impale them.

Touching the world now might tear them,
ravage their furless skin, leaving flesh
tattered like their maps. Perhaps they are
the allergy. Even as they fell and split
the ancient ones, they create words
for breaking life to pieces.

Chords of wood. Lumber. They build
things. They keep out the stars and shutter
themselves against the wisdom the wind
tells us. Their naked skin craves
the warmth in our dens. Our pelts. Their ears
play tricks on them, and they call me trickster,

because they cannot hear, they say

I walk on air, for I am on them before they understand,
this wind is my song, praying my paws across the earth.