Iris
de David St. John(2005)
2 min lectură
Mediu
There is a train inside this iris:
You think I\'m crazy, and like to say boyish
and outrageous things. No, there is
A train inside this iris.
It\'s a child\'s finger bearded in black banners.
A single window like a child\'s nail,
A darkened porthole lit by the white, angular face
Of an old woman, or perhaps the boy beside her in the stuffy,
Hot compartment. Her hair is silver, and sweeps
Back off her forehead, onto her cold and bruised shoulders.
The prairies fail along Chicago. Past the five
Lakes. Into the black woods of her New York; and as I bend
Close above the iris, I see the train
Drive deep into the damp heart of its stem, and the gravel
Of the garden path
Cracks under my feet as I walk this long corridor
Of elms, arched
Like the ceiling of a French railway pier where a boy
With pale curls holding
A fresh iris is waving goodbye to a grandmother, gazing
A long time
Into the flower, as if he were looking some great
Distance, or down an empty garden path and he believes a man
Is walking toward him, working
Dull shears in one hand; and now believe me: The train
Is gone. The old woman is dead, and the boy. The iris curls,
On its stalk, in the shade
Of those elms: Where something like the icy and bitter fragrance
In the wake of a woman who\'s just swept past you on her way
Home
and you remain.