Читать книгу Kindest Regards - Ted Kooser - Страница 19

After the Funeral: Cleaning Out the Medicine Cabinet

Behind this mirror no new world

opens to Alice. Instead, we find

the old world, rearranged in rows,

a dusty little chronicle

of small complaints and private sorrows,

each cough caught dry and airless

in amber, the sore feet powdered

and cool in their yellow can.

To this world turned the burning eyes

after their search, the weary back

after its lifting, the heavy heart

like an old dog, sniffing the lids

for an answer. Now one of us

unscrews the caps and tries the air

of each disease. Another puts

the booty in a shoe box: tins

of laxatives and aspirin,

the corn pads and the razor blades,

while still another takes the vials

of secret sorrows — the little pills

with faded, lonely codes — holding

them out the way one holds a spider

pinched in a tissue, and pours them down

the churning toilet and away.