Tale of a Heart and Soul (a Lyric)

Tale of a Heart and Soul


This is an odd story (or tale)
to say the least,
where I came upon any angry old man once
in Garmish Germany, back in ‘73—.
We walked together in the surrounding hills
and thus, spotted two young boys—
with silver-white hair, perhaps three or four
years of age, playing with a wolf,
that was peaceful, joyful, quite happy….

“Awe,” said the old man in fright and spite,
Just what do we have here?”
Spooked in admiration he was,
angry for whom, knows what!
He said to me, irritatingly, “If I were that
wolf beast, I’d be wild, free and happy!
I wish, I wish, I wish I could be!”

And I do believe, sometimes when we
wish hard enough, God grants us just
that, what we want, but shouldn’t have…
a lesson perhaps, to be learned,
if not by the ‘wisher’ hopefully by others.

And then, all of a sudden, the old man
was calm, peaceful, joyful, singing a song,
wanting to play with the boys, haply,
as if he really knew them…!
(something was very wrong);
then the angry wolf, attacked him—
not me, perhaps (so I thought at the time)
it was the Old man, inside the wolf’s skin,
and the wolf inside the man,
and the wolf killed him,
and I shot the wolf…!

#1784 4-8-2007 (D) Sometimes things happen for reasons beyond our comprehension, and simply not knowing why, so we guess at its internal structure, its motivation, reasoning, motives for being, happening, when it is the simplest of all to say what you really think and feel, and that is usually right. As in this case, perhaps the man got his wish, and envy got its revenge, one of the deadly seven sins.