Poems

Autopsy

What is this deadly poison that corrodes the best

in us, leaving only the shell?

Ingmar Bergman

 

maybe it was the sharp eye

of the bird of sleep

that was looking at us;

maybe it was all this anguish

traversing the borders

of the countries that live within

the scab on our skin;

maybe it was the deft outline

of the nuclear aboulia that

fills us with weariness

behind the rind of us;

maybe it was You and Me,

that we understood the nothingness

and made of it a profane tree

in the paradise of watching us fall;

maybe it was the circular stroke

that I undraw in the dirty air

when I hurl myself into your ravine;

maybe it was the teeth of that rift

that welcomes us, open-mouthed, into an end

that we’ve known for many years;

maybe it was the rancid sweat of the world,

the structural narcosis,

the vascular anaesthesia,

the saintly drowsiness;

maybe it was the gastric Void

of this sad god

that for some time

is bored

and cries rubble.