The Valley Of Dry Bones

With crow bones all the land is white,

From the gates of morn to the gates of night.

Picked clean, they lie on the cumbered ground,

And the politician's paunch is round;

And he strokes it down and across as he sings:"I've eaten my fill of the legs and wings,

The neck, the back, the pontifical nose,

Breast, belly and gizzard, for everything goes.

The meat that's dark (and there's none that's white)Exceeded the need of my appetite,

But I've bravely stuck to the needful

That a hungry domestic hog would shirk.

I've eaten the fowl that the Fates

To reluctant lips of the People's Friend.

Rank unspeakably, bitter as gall,

Is the bird, but I've eaten it, feathers and all.

I'm a dutiful statesman,

I am, althoughI really don't like a diet of crow.

So I've dined all alone in a furtive way,

But my platter I've cleaned every blessed day.

They say that I bolt; so I do—my bird;

They say that I sulk, but they've widely erred!

O Lord! if my enemies only

How I'm full to the throat with the corvic

They'd open their ears to hear me

The faith compelled by the corvic stress,(For, alas! necessity knows no law)In the heavenly caucus—'Caw!

Caw!

Caw!'"And that ornithanthropical person

By flapping his arms on the air to ride;

But I knew by the way that he clacked his

He was just the poor, featherless biped,

Dave Hill.