Scorpion
(an elegy)
A living-thing that nobody would take
into their lap to caress
hug-hug, pat-pat.
Nothing to greet it, no elegiac couplets,
no benevolent thoughts, no fruit preserves
to welcome it. Only
poison on the threshold
fine powder, potato beetle
grains of boric acid, Borax, Flit:
only countless useless barricades
shut windows
blazing sun:
only a reminder of Elizabeth
and the Egypto-Roman setting.
The walls were made just for it
--a hyena. Pluto’s pictoresque point,
stir-up of a hornet’s nest
the clitoris of the witch:
a harpy, a scorpion fish, scorpius balcanicus...
The solution is in the hotbed. Find that
bed of fertility and venom
this spot of aggregation, accumulation, multiplication.
Progressive, geometric, chthonic.
Strip the rotten bark from the logs.
The fallen walnut, the hidden parchment
on Eros and Psyche, seething with larvae
with vermin and eggs.
The one that accepts only damp dark
surfaces, and underground routes undesirable
in all homes, it flares up suddenly like a fire
crawls over ceilings as if over a designated sky
without the speed of cockroaches
mice and wasps.
Unadapted and dreadful
without the mythology of the ancients.
Translated by Rajna Koska; copy-reading: Margaret Reid
