Читать книгу The Village on Horseback - Jesse Ball - Страница 54

These pregnant methods, cheerful

and fat, leaning from filthy casements

in the side of June may yield

ink-eyed marionettes so lovely

that their gestures,

pointedly describing strings,

mean little even to the adept.

Mary. Isa. Joan. Celeste.

Roaming the grounds

of this quartered preserve.

Mary lays a lacquered hand

upon your cheek. Joan’s plain head

inclines—she is speaking

but the voice is from above.

Isa crouches in the near future;

she will scream at a painted boar

that bursts from a stand of trees.

Celeste is absent. Or is Joan

speaking of her when she says,

“I knew a matchstick once

that burned like the hands of a clock.”

From the scenery then, a wooden creaking

as of someone’s descent. Applause.

Applause. And in the front row

a man’s heart bursts in his chest.