I USE A DEAD LANGUAGE KNOWN ONLY TO MYSELF


I want my critics to say I am a clown.
I wish to be introduced
as one of the Fratalini Brothers,
those generations of painted idiots
who amused the royal families of Europe.

My desire is to carry on as if
no dark abyss has opened at my feet,
as if the moon were not endangered
by our indifference, as if
the hermaphrodite angel
whispering in my ear at this
very moment did not exist.

Where are those works of genius
recorded on fragile papyrus,
now become dust, ground up,
mixed with mud to make bricks
to build the prisons of tyrants?

Who dares waste a bare tree
with a simile?  I care
when a  cloud resembles Elvis.