Brutus
We overslept and missed the Spring again,
and then came an angry man,
spluttering blood, farting beluga.
Go away, we said, with your mischief
and your hideous beard, but he stayed.
He scared my cousin with his talk of girls,
and my wife with his knowledge of money.
He put the fear of God in us all
and stayed forever: a hulking
unwanted, necessary saint.
On receiving a book from a friend I’ve never met
Your book came to me in a difficult turn;
I’d accepted solitude,
a sort of velveteen sock I moused
myself into each morning
but lately something was shifting:
the phone would ring,
and I would answer it;
waiters, despite my best intentions, smiled.
Then came your book, warm
as a wintering beast, a way
to be together yet apart.
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Gasoline
She mentioned all the things that were wrong
just so as to have mentioned them;
fixing them would have meant accepting
or, at the very least engaging with,
the idea of a perfect world and she knew,
all credit to her, that that idea was worse
than all of the things that were wrong.
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Christmas in August
She starts planning Christmas in August,
between the time of comets and the moment
when the beach goes Death in Venicey.
It was then that the year tipped and slid
towards its end, summer for her all but gone.
This year on the menu, as well as
the oysters and children and champagne,
there will be lions and lambs lying down
together, there will be a bloodless
definitive reckoning, buckwheat tortillas
and time will stop.
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© Rufo Quintavalle 2010
http://rufoquintavalle.blogspot.com/
