Maybe longer. It’s not very good but it was the best I could do, and I could never bring myself to go back and revise it.
So today it goes out, the way I wrote and felt it then.
La nonna
Like a street dog
hit a dozen times
she lives
A collection of
loosely cooperating
rampantly deteriorating
parts
leased past their expiry
by accruing debts of
biblical afflictions.
Here is the laundry list
(recited to other octogenarians
in that macabre game the aged play):
1. Blind, as per Bartimeus.
2. Lame, as per the man at the beauteous gate.
3. Rheumatic, although I am told that this is not really a disease.
All she lacks is leprosy.
She already bears a shroud.
She moves within a snapshot that does not exist:
not where it was captured,
nor where it was brought.
Within her allotment of space
on the earth,
the paths that she inscribes
are contracting.
Her orbitals shrink.
Soon I fear
she will fall completely still
and in the way of all things material
thus cease to be.
I, like the vigourous young
God of the Israelites
would like to see her
obliterated
by lightning,
leaving behind only a
hot volume of particles and a
black mark in the earth.
Because this time
I am not pliant enough to
endure slow rot.
The bridge-board pegs in the
waiting rooms will no longer
morph into spaceships and
transport me into an
obligingly blithe dimension.
I will not be able to pull plugs
with such firm certainty,
such rigid triceps behind the tug.
I will not be able to wait until
bearing the casket outside to
shudder and weep as we guide her
to her allotment of space
in this earth
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