Читать книгу The Folded Heart - Michael Collier - Страница 12

V-8

The motor hung in my neighbor’s back yard

for years, tarp-covered and lashed with rope.

Suspended from the rusty block and tackle

of an engine hoist, it cast a constant shadow

on the concrete pad. And all around it lay

the necklaces and hoses of its accessories:

the black spark-plug harness, the bedpan

of the air filter, the fuel pump and distributor,

the carburetor on its side with its barrels

and chambers exposed. And though my neighbor

never rebuilt the engine, he must have thought

about it often: a heavy pendulum that

no wind moved, a plumb bob fixed dead center

like some bulky reference point he ducked

and dodged each time he passed through the yard.

And each time, too, he had to pass the small side

door to the garage which held the silent tools:

the bright chrome sockets and ratchets, wrenches

and drivers bundled in soft canvas, like good silver

shoed in its polish cloth. I was too young to know

what a life’s work was, too impatient to understand

how our true affections are deflected, shunted

by the domestic, by the hard promises we make

to another. What did I know of our capacity to transform

bitterness into love, as he did helping

a teenager load the V-8 into the back of a pickup,

cranking the hoist winch down slowly with one hand

and with the other fending off the willful spin of the block,

until it settled in the bed, tilted on its side,

leaking a puddle of oil, dark and latent?