Codicil of the Arrogant Man
I leave you the cold
slab of moon
laid out dark on the table
like the sky,
the moon
no ethereal patient, but bodily
heaven brought low.
No corona. The vet
took to the saw work like a cow
to grass, while the actress
snapped cheesy photos
of the autopsy:
Me with the circular saw
poised over the Sinus Medii.
You peering cautiously beneath the sheet
as if still hardly daring, now the moon was dead,
to check out its backside.
How often we’d teased each other
about pinching its behind,
if only it would ever turn around.
Now solemnity spoiled our fun, even if you cracked
a joke slitting its trousers up the rear.
And the moon split open,
boned and trimmed,
the vet’s hands laying each piece
out on its plate.
I leave you the cow or rather
I am supposed to leave you
that constellation of heifers
who heaved themselves into heaven.
Those black stars.
They didn’t do it.
Or stop to taste the strangers in the car
on their joyride up
the county route ruined
by that roadkill moon.
All the rot and killing
and they didn’t smell a thing.
I leave you the actress, her parka, her girlish
face by the field. Imagine her playing
her well known face
in a documentary cobbled together without original footage.
Besides reenactments, photographs star
with death masks and astrolabes.
Need I mention how dark
her parka was?
– as if she could swaddle all
the light the moon leaked,
and it wouldn’t notice
it had fallen from the sky.
| Ezra Dan Feldman |
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