*
It wasn’t I who made you this way
said Darwin,
the divine intuitive care of genetics opted
to give you light hair and a dark laugh,
everything else,
the short-sightedness,
unstable blood pressure and cancerous growth,
those you managed to get all on your own.
*
Why do you forge the shield, Hephaistos, why do you waste the time
when I’ve been bestowed with near invulnerability,
nothing can destroy me in any battle,
apart from blisters on my heel
I fear nothing.
Fear of Loss
I’m afraid I’ll lose
a glove.
One I left behind in Toronto,
leaving a hand bare,
the other gloved,
I shoved the bare hand into my pocket,
pretending I still had both,
that all was as it should be –
I had a pair, leather and skin, but
at the Moscow station my bare hand met a pickpocket’s,
the two were there together,
deep within my coat pocket,
my left and the pickpocket’s right,
ten fingers
as if my very own,
I squeezed
but couldn’t tell who grabbed whom,
what five got on the train to Tallinn,
what five went with the pickpocket
and now lurk Red Square,
ever searching strangers’ purses
for what they once lost.
