Drinkable Glory

I’ve conceived a roofless verse feast

as time’s spouseless bandorist…

Summer magazines are plagued with cervicides,

nonoglots wearing their cerebroid lampshade brides…

Saplings craving for rampant livelihood

rush into bewilderment’s ears to brood…

Daybreak would take me unawares many a times,

remoulding rhymes, I’d give my life for carol chimes !

I wept a lifetime, paying all my dolorous dues,

until my hardy trees gave birth to foal hues…

I’ve burnt the heroism of putrid sprigs, fowls,

squirrels, green lizards, gnomic eagle owls,

parietal taciturnities, amici corvi sheltered on my floor,

the sorrow mistletoe hung on flimsy coatrack amour…

I’ve grown inured to the art of splintering, slicing — prowls

in which yesterday I was bereft of Frost, today it’s Fowles…

I’ve camouflaged my utopian grandparents in a dream —

the sky’s turbines are on the proscription list upstream…

Lion-hearted knights-errant spur the surveyor steep hill

and parabolic reflector fairies breathe their goodwill…

Take a look, the overboiled compote jars are on the march !

As for you, unlock the world with unfaltering keys from your bunch !

Make sure the tomato sauce hasn’t boiled over,

mind your son or your daughter don’t miss the clover,

handle the unmarred shoes, flus, huts, shortcomings,

nurture your dreams to retroactively repair their wings,

check whether you’ve richly sprinkled empirical basil

over the postterm literary prize, blocked by the headsill,

reassure you’ve impeccably tailored taxonomic rondeaux,

seasoning the borsh with lovage and pickled morceaux…

Our cervical and lumbar spondyloses propel us upright…

I bring the mill to your water, chutes, the metalasers’ insight,

felicitous apiaries, aconite, Aurum Potabile, ramrods,

calophyllic peristyles, galactogogue burdocks, viable pods ,

the blessed thistle, the conservative aspirin needs and heeds,

allopathic love, stinging nettles, blackcurrants, nutmeg seeds,

the defrosting from the gripes of saturnine colics,

the rigorous abidance of things in their own rubrics —

a wholesome radiant life of ‘glory drinkable’

on the moon’s face, new-mown and inimitable…

English version by Gabriela PACHIA