I asked for a day off
To settle my affairs.
Receiving denials,
I cut out the day.
They don’t believe me,
They want more.
More than I can give.
They want my life.
They want my life
And I’m dying.
They carry babies from the forest in shopping bags
They carry babies from the forest in paper bags.
Poor unlucky Romanticists
Poor intellectual, luckless, Romantics
They carry babies wrapped in moldy newspaper.
There is a fire in the woods.
There is a fire that burns twigs and
Newspapers,
Clocks and Mathematics
There is a fire that burns fire and
Steel,
Iron and water
There is a fire that burns fire and
Newspapers,
Twigs and babies
There is a fire that burns you
And me
And these words.
~
First published in Zip Slant Ø 1980.
