Читать книгу Love's Last Number - Christopher Howell - Страница 14

DIMINISHING RETURNS

A crow sits in the dark, thinking

I’m an owl scouring this field for mice.

Then he thinks, I’m suddenly wise, too:

rem acu tetigisti, brother.

He looks in all his leafy cupboards

for testimonials and diplomas.

Finding none, he says, perhaps

I am an hawk, and he can feel

his beak bend down and a pleasurable

bloodlust fill his mind like gasoline.

Oh, I’m a killer now, I am,

he says to his glinting talons,

but it’s night, I really ought to be

sleeping. So he sleeps. In his dream

he is a melon and a huge blade

severs one half of him from the other.

When he wakes, falling, he is two

blackbirds with one wing each.