Читать книгу How Festive the Ambulance - Kim Fu - Страница 9

The Pig Man / The Dark Circus

I.

Sad-face clowns play accordion, euphonium and clarinet,

joyless Balkan melodies in a minor key. Audience volunteers

are tricked into digging a pit at centre ring.

The lions are losing their hair, dry cough

instead of roar. Wolf children sniff along the ground,

eat discarded popcorn kernels and snarl convincingly

until a lady in the front row shrieks, These are real children!

I am the star attraction, the pig-man,

bristle-bearded, faintly familiar: were we once neighbours?

Did you leave your daughters with me during an emergency—

your wife had heart palpitations and you didn’t know

if it was serious, and you had seen me,

reading on my porch, sweeping leaves, quiet, knowable,

well-intentioned in the way of the elderly—

PIG MAN! you scream, as loud as you know how.

II.

The children were always wolves, fairy-tale tricksters,

bursting out of cloaks with bits of grandma in their teeth,

huffing and puffing while I watched through the windows

of my solid brick house. They used to believe my stories.

I sent them to the pristine beaches of my childhood

(the water now choked with red algae, primordial soup

sucking them under, higher mammals with tumours

where their eyes should be, slick tributaries on fire),

sold them useless toys, convinced them that

boredom was sickness and I had the cure.

Now they stalk through the streets in ski masks,

furry snouts protruding from cut holes,

smashing storefronts and calling for me.

PIG MAN! they cry, voices cracking pubescent:

You will pay for what you’ve done.

My house holds fast. I get old and older. They forget

you cannot extort the dead. The belly is bacon,

the organs are sweetbreads. The mind is the brain

and the brain is for aspic.