I’ve been reproached for everything save the weather
and in turn my own neck was seeking a scimitar.
But soon, I’m told, I’ll lose my epaulets altogether
and dwindle into a little star.
I’ll twinkle among the wires, a sky’s lieutenant,
and hide in clouds when thunder roars,
blind to the troops as they fold their pennant
and run, pursued by the pen, in droves.
With nothing around to care for, it’s of no import
if you are blitzed, encircled, reduced to nil.
Thus wetting his dream with the tumbled ink pot,
a schoolboy can multiply as no tables will.
And although the speed of light can’t in nature covet
thanks, non-being’s blue armor plate,
prizing attempts at making a sifter of it,
might use my pinhole, at any rate.
1994
Translated by the author