The hexed leg in the arid bed. Time aches,
horizons wound, light stabs—there’s room for it
all, missy. My rickety teeth bite the apple. The
venom has stopped tasting like poison. At times it
distorts the drunken features of my comrades, and
again the paint is fresh, the wax is fresh, the garlic
is ripe. And every spring on the rotting burial
mound new grass grows. Here in my bed the cycle
saddens me, but it’s not abstractions I fear. It’s the
pack of dogs passing every morning as I carry my
bag of dreams and coins to the deserted station,
the night’s silk remnant trailing a whiff of rose and
laurel. I wait with apple crumbs on my teeth and
the feeble perfection of my poetic sabbaths.