Here's Looking at You

after Henri Michaux

Those who see me coming.
Me too, I’m onto them.
One day the cold will speak.
The cold will push the door open on Nothing.
And then, my hearties? What then?
Backsides to the wind, still swaggering,
bloated with others’ voices and the lungs of the age,
I see the whole pack of you under one cover.
Hard at work? The palm tree shakes its arms.

And you combatants, soldiers of good heart, sold and unpaid.
Your glorious cause is beneath you. It’ll be cold
in history’s corridors.
How cold it is!
I see you be-aproned, and oh what a sight!
I see Christ too, and why not?
As he was two millennia back.
His beauty fading already.
His face gnawed by the kisses of Christians to come.
So are we still on for selling those seats in heaven?
I’m off then all, goodbye, my foot’s on the escalator already.
Slán!