what to speak about
What to
speak about tonight? And preach
in a land
we recognise, tolerate,
seldom
forget.
That
country with its droll beginnings,
its clammy
climate, its sapless stories
about the
old days,
its
inhabitants, greedy till their final fall
among the
cauliflowers.
They keep
on multiplying
in a
paradise of their own imagining,
hankering
for happiness, shivering, mouths full of porridge.
Just as in
nature
which
depilates our puny hills,
scorches
our pastures, poisons our air,
the
guileless cows graze on.
Speak about
the writings of this land,
printed
matter full of question marks
on the
patient paper
that time
and again is shocked by its history
and so
resorts to concealing shorthand.
Speak about
the curtains
that people
draw around themselves.
But still
we hear them, the stinking
primates
that stalk each other in rooms.
Just as in
nature
the
hibiscus gives off no scent,
that the
innocent cows do, becoming bogged
in the
piss-logged earth.
Speak in
that land of glittering grass
in which
man,
intemperate
worm,.dreaming carcass,
dwells
among the corpses which dead as they are
remain
obedient to our memory.
Just as our
nature expects a single,
simple
miracle that one day will finally
explain
what we were,
not only
this remote spectacle
thrown
together by time.
Speak about
that time which, they said,
would mark
as a brand and palimpsest?
We lived in
an aged of using
and being
usable.
What
defence against such?
What
festive arse-feathers?
What cellar
song? Perhaps.
Say it.
Perhaps.
A few swift
scratches in slate
and that’s
the outline of your love.
Fingerprints
in the clay are her hips.
Phonemes of
joy sometimes sounded
if she,
when she, called you like a cat.
Speaking
about her presence
wakens the
blue hour of twilight.
Just as in
nature
the
merciless, glassy, blue azure
of our
planet seen from Apollo..
And though
from simply speaking
your
festive cap begins to feel heavy
and the
lifeline in your palm
starts
festering
still,
notwithstanding, nevertheless
honour the
flowering
of the
shadows that inhabit us,
the shadows
begging for consolation.
And still
stroke her shoulder blade.
Like the
back of a hunchback
Still
hankering for a ferocious happiness.
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