Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, <br />Out of black bean and wet slate bread, <br />Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, <br />Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, <br />They Lion grow. <br /> <br /> Out of the gray hills <br />Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride, <br />West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties, <br />Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps, <br />Out of the bones' need to sharpen and the muscles' to stretch, <br />They Lion grow. <br /> <br /> Earth is eating trees, fence posts, <br />Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones, <br />"Come home, Come home!" From pig balls, <br />From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness, <br />From the furred ear and the full jowl come <br />The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose <br />They Lion grow. <br /> <br /> From the sweet glues of the trotters <br />Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower <br />Of the hams the thorax of caves, <br />From "Bow Down" come "Rise Up," <br />Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels, <br />The grained arm that pulls the hands, <br />They Lion grow. <br /> <br /> From my five arms and all my hands, <br />From all my white sins forgiven, they feed, <br />From my car passing under the stars, <br />They Lion, from my children inherit, <br />From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion, <br />From they sack and they belly opened <br />And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth <br />They feed they Lion and he comes.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/they-feed-they-lion/
