Quicksilver
The strip of moonlight on the sea between two tall buildings
reminds me of quicksilver, that remarkable metal
that has fallen to earth from a colder world
where they use it to make images of their gods.
All that quicksilver they pour into thermometers, I thought:
it would surely fill a lake so huge no-one could see across it.
And wouldn’t it really be better to use it like that
instead of wasting that beautiful metal on arses
– if we let the incurably ill saunter to and fro
on the surface of that lake in their hospital clothes
and some in wheelchairs, thin and shivering with fever
and each assisted by at least two nuns of the order
that has big white hats like full-rigged tea-clippers.
And even if this were their last outing
wouldn’t they feel it to be a meaningful death
giving our life a meaning, we who would stand on the shore
following them with half-pitying, half-envious glances
when like Christ they walked out on the glittering lake, waving
their blood-stained handkerchiefs.
Translated by Robin Fulton
Page(s) 108
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