There Are Men Too Gentle, a poem by James Kavanaugh.

Post 513 - James Kavanaugh was a former Catholic priest who came to fame in 1967 with his controversial bestseller, A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church. He later wrote bestselling books of poetry and other works and died in December, 2009 at the age of 81. In the early 1970's, as an ex-priest, living in a New York walk-up, sustained by peanut butter and cheese whiz, he wrote his first book of poetry, There are Men too Gentle to Live Among Wolves. To date, it has sold over two million copies.


There Are Men Too Gentle To Live Among Wolves by James Kavanaugh

There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who prey upon them with IBM eyes
And sell their hearts and guts for martinis at noon.
There are men too gentle for a savage world
Who dream instead of snow and children and Halloween
And wonder if the leaves will change their color soon.

There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who anoint them for burial with greedy claws
And murder them for a merchant's profit and gain.
There are men too gentle for a corporate world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And pause to hear the distant whistle of a train.

There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who devour them with appetite and search
For other men to prey upon and suck their childhood dry.
There are men too gentle for an accountant's world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And search for beauty in the mystery of the sky.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves

There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove
Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant's world
Unless they have a gentle one to love.


“If anything has changed over the years, and it has, I only feel more confident now about what I wrote then. I am far more aware of the power that guides each of us along the way, and provides us with the insights and people we need for our journey. There are, indeed, men and women too gentle to live among wolves and only when joined with them will life offer the searcher, step by step, all that is good and beautiful. Life becomes not a confused struggle or pointless pain, but an evolving mosaic masterpiece of the person we were destined to become."