Just odds and ends, today. Odds and ends.
[“Porte Dorée 8” by Irina Ionesco, via]
Cuckoo-Clock
by Kalyiel
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and the chuckle spread from ear to ear.
~ T.S. Eliot, “The Fire Sermon” in “The Waste Land”
It was a cold summer night of November
And you were limping softly, dear,
In the cog-carpeted chambers of the cuckoo-clock,
Where you’ve lived ever since we married.
I could hear you coughing from time to time
And that made me feel guilty,
Because it reminded me of all the books
I’d borrowed from you, and never returned.
I liked listening to you, however,
As you put the dust back where it belonged,
Whistling in-between the cuckoo’s protracted breaths…
It felt like you were negotiating a slip of the tongue,
Waiting for the spring of life to uncoil,
To startle me and make me confess that yes,
I’d been taking my coffee
With more spirit and less sugar, these days.
But you didn’t know that I, too, was waiting,
Nauseous and melancholy in my sanguine armchair,
Brewing potions in the form of bottled eyedrops.
It was a cold summer night of November –
Your cough protested at each swish of the pendulum.
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 