With crow bones all the land is white, <br />From the gates of morn to the gates of night. <br />Picked clean, they lie on the cumbered ground, <br />And the politician's paunch is round; <br />And he strokes it down and across as he sings: <br />'I've eaten my fill of the legs and wings, <br />The neck, the back, the pontifical nose, <br />Breast, belly and gizzard, for everything goes. <br />The meat that's dark (and there's none that's white) <br />Exceeded the need of my appetite, <br />But I've bravely stuck to the needful work <br />That a hungry domestic hog would shirk. <br />I've eaten the fowl that the Fates commend <br />To reluctant lips of the People's Friend. <br />Rank unspeakably, bitter as gall, <br />Is the bird, but I've eaten it, feathers and all. <br />I'm a dutiful statesman, I am, although <br />I really don't like a diet of crow. <br />So I've dined all alone in a furtive way, <br />But my platter I've cleaned every blessed day. <br />They say that I bolt; so I do-my bird; <br />They say that I sulk, but they've widely erred! <br />O Lord! if my enemies only knew <br />How I'm full to the throat with the corvic stew <br />They'd open their ears to hear me profess <br />The faith compelled by the corvic stress, <br />(For, alas! necessity knows no law) <br />In the heavenly caucus-'Caw! Caw! Caw!'' <br /> <br /> <br />And that ornithanthropical person tried <br />By flapping his arms on the air to ride; <br />But I knew by the way that he clacked his bill <br />He was just the poor, featherless biped, Dave Hill.<br /><br />Ambrose Bierce<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-valley-of-dry-bones-2/
