I chanted songs before the enchanter
chanted this world into being from fire, air, earth, water,
wind, mist, dew, from fruits, from an unknown frightful thing. 

I know the chants that make corpses rot and bring
the dead to life from the cold earth’s bones.
I know the sleeping songs of stones. 

My chants of transformation
rival the formulae of mathematicians.
I sing not numbers, sine, cosine, dark equations

but still I can launch an aeroplane or nuclear bomb.
I can bring warplanes down from the skies
and I can call a seedling to grow.

I make a mockery of all who claim
to conquer the divinities of mountaintops
and gyres with what you call my neanderthal tongue.

I am no songbird and I am certainly no homo sapiens.
I know nothing of your guilt and depression,
only the chants of Chanting Crow.