Читать книгу Now You Care - Di Brandt - Страница 10

This night I am haunted by your stray dogs, Frankie,

of Albert Street, their thin, eager love, abject,

you called it, useful, waving your hand, smiling slightly, over

shrimp cocktail and Chablis, nicely

chilled, their backbones broken, flesh frozen into fear.

Let me confess, dear Francis, your confessions were not

unattractive to me, your wife the psychologist busy

helping every poor sinner and no time for you.

Your shaking hand, your heaving trembling chest.

Your twenty year sacrifice of every tender feeling

in the name of civic love. Your soldier’s fortitude.

Your impressive million dollar contract to inject them

with whatever poison you feel like to advance our knowledge of

their pain. Like every poet I can

assure you I have prostituted myself for less, gathering fuel in

vacant lots, so zu sprechen, Herr Doktor,

wagging my tail, eagerly, panting for healing in the morning and

vivisection at night, suffering

my sainthood graciously, my bowels domesticated,

my howls unheard in the abandoned hermitage.