Respectability

CHRISTOPHER MULROONEY

you turn your head says Rimbaud

your head turns easily say no more

how many times I’ve found a fable to my hand

let the rhapsode now say it’s the sun in the way of gears that don’t mesh

and through the interstices one sees the mystery garden

moonlight under the lamps almost invisible

yet it is there as surely as you’re Goldilocks in the telling

or Odysseus or King Saul in the way of pity and instruction

alors quoi merde what is she saying?

what’s that is the she falling house to be torn down in my absence

the ground purified with salt

my ashes strewn in the handy river after of course the guillotine or what?

untold country say what we are told country tales and tall

what’s the barrel say the barrel was what ah

the barrel say you aye tub-thump and the barrel-chasing down the hill

and barrel-rolling back up to the summit again

she made the plain gesture of spreading

her peasant dress wherever we were treading