Читать книгу Late Empire - Lisa Olstein - Страница 15

POSSIBILITY OF REPAIR

Now we grieve waving fuzzy

avatars in the clotted air, virtual

mourners lining up to testify to

a glimpse of a wisp of your hair.

A bunch of phonies, you might say,

where were you when the fox got

stumbling drunk on mulberry wine,

when the cat caught and released

that woodpecker onto the crooked

ladder of my spine? Ham and

cheese on a hillock where before us

Mohawks and mountain lions

and countless freshmen and maybe

a few freedmen once sled. Some

soggy children, a lost Spiritualist

or two, late to the orgy, their donkey

having taken a wrong turn early on,

but you know what they say about

all paths winding up the same hill.

Overcomplicated, the hooks and latches

on this brassiere, by which I mean

embrace. Beloved nobodies, deranged

neighbors, doppelgängers every one,

who among us is willing to look

with proper awe at the gossamer fawn

newly pushed from its flesh palace

into the wrong season’s brisk air?

Snowflake, turn out that blue light.

Somehow we’ve ended up in the yard

again counting turkeys by hindsight.

Saintly, they’ll be martyred beneath

the paling sun. Come on, we whisper

to the near disappeared. Come on,

come out, come up. Okay then, we say,

go on, some boats are made for one.