Читать книгу Love's Last Number - Christopher Howell - Страница 19

3. The Parable as Originally Told

It was a story nobody knew,

a nobody-could-possibly-know-it story

more or less untold: a man with no arms

finds a railroad spike and a hunk of cheese

beside a dying cat. To the man

with no arms the cat says, “When I must shed

this mortal coil, this veil of fleas, it is my fondest

wish that these my only possessions

should pass to someone worthy of their panic

lustre, their duende. Are you such a one, oh man

with no arms?”

The man with no arms enters a frenzy of nodding

and falls forward upon these treasures, devouring

the spike straight away

and peering curiously at the cheese.

The End