Читать книгу The Infinitesimals - Laura Kasischke - Страница 20

At the End of the Text, a Small Bestial Form

This is the glimpse of the god you were never supposed to get.

Like the fox slipping into the thicket.

Like the thief in the night outside the window. The cool

gray dorsal fin in the distance. Invisible

mountain briefly visible through the mist

formed of love and guilt.

And the stranger’s face hidden in the family picture. The one

imagining her freedom, like

the butterfly blown against the fence

in her best yellow dress

by the softest breeze of summer:

To have loved

and to have suffered. To have waited

for nothing, and for nothing to have come.

And the water like sleek black fur combed back that afternoon:

The young lovers rowed a boat. The boy

reeled in a fish. The husband

smiled, raising

a toast.

While the children grew anxious

for dinner. While something

struggled under the water,

bound by ropes.

And the warm milk dribbled down the sick man’s chin.

And the wife, the mother, the daughter, the hostess, and those

few people on Earth she would ever wish were dead

were the ones she loved the most.