FINISHING SCHOOL

I know that my pupil is imperfect.
It may be that herein lies her strength.
Small hands, soft sighs - evidence of a passionate nature.
Sure enough, the foot is deformed.

Her eyes are deep, like a pond of black water.
She knows very well how to burrow in the darkness.
It is bitterness I want to teach her -
of which life is woven, the wild bible.

Sweet dreams, delusive hopes.
The taint is passed on from parent to child.
How could anyone as pale as she, I wonder, sit so silently?
I'll never tire of punishing her.



FAR FROM THE PEARLY SHELL

When a woman wishes to be cruel, she is more cruel.
Her gestures are always accompanied by winter winds,
so that now her eyes seem even more beautiful and tragic.
Such is the clarity of her rare destiny,
that she wakes at dawn and boards a train, without explanation,
to come south.
Imagine someone dangerous and diseased;
silent, despite dark clothing.
She should never have been allowed past the convent doors.
Marry her and you marry disquiet.




MYSTERIES AND LACQUERS


To avenge yourself for that, what will you do?
You must try to touch his heart.
Concoct a special soup in his honour.
Laugh and cry and be afraid, and so on.
The morning passes, the evening passes.
Not even a rain will fall
in this climate, where cherries never ripen.
Please abandon all hope, my dear friend,
and above all, the soft air of astonishment.



MADAME DEFICIT

You said that we could play, but you never said for how long
MARIE ANTOINETTE

I want you to eclipse
the light for me,
at the gaming table,
masked balls.
Hunting the boar
and wearying one horse
tranquillises my nerves.

A man who loves chess
or beautiful swords
or something else -
as the cynical whisper
runs in the anterooms,
and from delicacy
overplaying my part,
while your husband,
who is no husband,
sleeps heavily.

We're too close
to separate music
from cruelty, playing
with danger as with
all the other things.
You've ruined yourself,
your realm, drained
the treasury, though
later you will keep
a malicious silence.



FREIGHT

That's the path we would have
taken, there were many like us,
like a shadow on the lung,
and it didn't cost the earth,
after all. Relocated to the east
in August, but is that so important?
the crowded rooms, the fabric
much too thin for the time of year.
Yes, stripped of all that is human
where the roads abandon their
cities. Remember: everything is
transitory, even the disturbances;
even the sunlight, trees and fields.

That's how long we shouted.
The silence is the silence.
The child spies on the mother,
day pays for night. Freight trains
will arrive at their destinations.
The forest runs along the border,
we must not forget that. And
the moon is in the heavens,
fighting to get free when held.


Copyright © Emma Lew, 2009