"'The Lord, the Lord!' he cried,
shaking the lovebird in its cage.
'See the Lord! He's growing, he's growing!'
Then he was tossed into the air with the cage,
and he ran, flew, danced, staggered,
and fled with the screeching bird, himself a bird.
Taking flight at last, he fluttered across the fields
in the direction of the sewage land and was heard shouting
through the voices of the tommy guns: 'He's growing, he's growing!'
He was still screaming when the two young Russians reloaded.
'He's growing!' And even when the tommy guns rang out again,
even after Oskar had fallen down a stepless staircase
into an expanding, all-engulfing faint, I could hear the bird,
the voice, the raven, I could hear Leo proclaiming to all the world:
'He's growing, he's growing, he's growing...'"