The Iliad of peace began when this girl agreed. Now goats in trees, fish in the valley suddenly feel vivid.

Swallows flit in the stable as if a hatching of their kind, turned human, cried in the manger showing the hunger-diamond.

Cattle are content that this calf must come in human form. Spiders discern a water-walker. Even humans will sense the lamb,

He who frees from the old poem turtle-dove and snake, who gets death forgiven who puts the apple back.

Dogs, less enslaved but as starving as the poorest human there, crouch, agog at a crux of presence remembered as a star.