Prayer for the Lions

Let sleeping lions lie
Let them hang from the trees
Let the gifts they brought us
find strangers’ hands
Let them say thank you
for the happiness they found in our homes

 Let the lions rest
They are broken and sealed
Some grew up in the shadows of brick
Some cut paths through fields, near the grasslands of their births
Some found their way to new villages beside rivers
traveling above deep seas

Let sleeping lions know their brood
Let them dream of their young
and protect them in dreams
as they did not protect them in daylight and darkness
May they begin their journeys in death
with humility, unlike the reigns of their pride

In the journeys beyond death
may shame hold their legs
with the fear they created and the blindness
through the desecration of bodies, the silence of mistrust
far from their swaggering ballast, their absence and assertion
their indelible roars

May the lions rest when they believe
we know who they were
we know who they are
and we release them
as we miss them
no longer our heroes

From Mobius, a manuscript in progress. First published in The Brooklyn Rail.