The Angel (Your picture)
Sleep now, as though you’d never in your life occupied a frame,
As though your hands had never set even this picture in a frame,
As though they had not arranged cuttings that float
In an inch of water which you made a sea.
Not your crooked leg among the runners
Nor your teeth clamped on the shoulder that carries you,
Nor a victim, naturally: You’ve never in your life been a victim.
Sleep, despising those you call “coherent”,
Believing that your feet tread a path you forged.
Don’t for one moment ask about the handful of dust
You are wont to throw in the faces of those that call you to account,
Staggered by the abuse; how vulgar it was.
Forget that your air is not your own, that you breathe
With an army of respirators, that you
Are like the moneymen: every step calculated.
You are a beast in your strength; you’re in demand…
Your contemporaries really are spiteful: you are resplendent with tragedy
A pioneering presence on every screen.
Sleep and hug, like the downy pillow, the certainty
That you’re the genius, alone in a society of retards.
Pay no mind to the frame you put around your picture
Nor that once you thought it ugly. Pay no mind
To the fact your picture was ugly, ugly
Enough—once you’d framed it—to burn.
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Trans. qisasukhra.wordpress.com
