Knick-knacks glimmered there beneath the mirror:
netsuke, chainlets, cutouts, rings, those eggs
Fabergé used to lay at Eastertime,
some smoky-pink Venetian vials set
to flank a sky-blue Danish piglet, and
an inlaid Persian casket made to serve
as a receptacle to store receipts,
(gas, telephone, electric light) and also
prescriptions for a scarce bacterial ointment,
and on mahogany scorched by curling-irons
a dusting of some powder, greasy-pink,
a little golden cylinder reflecting
a bright red spot on a blue envelope
without a stamp, instead, a jet-black imprint:
FIELD CENSORSHIP: INSPECTED AND APPROVED –
DEVORPPA DNA DETCEPSNI :PIHSROSNEC DLEIF,
reversed because those colours, pink and blue,
the Persian-Danish stuff, the irons, the ointment,
was infiltrating back behind the mirror,
where glimmered Fabergé in Venice fog, –
silently clucking, which was it that he laid
– necklace, or netsuke, or perhaps a ring?
The prescription for the phone or for the ointment?
Or was it all cheap trinkets from Galicia?
…………………………
…………………………
over this world there hovered, not a visage,
but a black platter fashioned out of paper,
that used to play ‘The International’.