Peter Redgrove
six odes
III. howdah-lady
A little bloodstained clockwork in a puddle of blood.
She picked it up sighing, wiped it on her skirt.
Look, she said, it's all that's left of Peter, I wonder what could
have done it?
I shrugged my heavy shoulders.
I don't know, she said, whether one can give a piece of machinery
a proper burial. Might it not be better, she sniggered, to fasten
it in a memorial clock, so that one always thought of poor Peter
as one looked at the time?
My eye itched, I rubbed it with my ear.
I suppose he was thrown from his elephant, she said, placing one
tiny foot in the crook of my trunk, and when they dragged him away
this piece remained.
I hoisted her to my back.
But I don't want the beastly thing, she cried from the howdah, and
she flung the clockwork into the swamp.
As we left, I saw it turn into a golden beetle that buzzed off into
a belt of wild nasturtiums.
Page(s) 49
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