The eleventh one is in celebration of my newly-acquired tarot deck. And since tarot calls for a decent amount of obscurity, I’ve decided for a title in Romanian (well, half of it, at least).
[detail from “The Temptation of St Anthony” by Hieronymus Bosch, via Wikipedia]
Oasele desperecheate ale altcuiva
or
Rites of Passage
by Kalyiel
[…] the thought already clothed with form in the unseen hall of the sculptor’s brain.
~ George MacDonald, “Phantastes”
Oh, they’ve tried it more than once before:
To lure me with their fish-scales
And promises of riches to fill my tomb
Even to the brim. Only, I’ve already thrown
Somebody else’s disjointed bones into my grave.
They’re a messy heap topped by
A candy tombstone – it’ll probably dissolve
At the next heavy rain. I don’t mind.
It’s better that they forget my name,
Forget where I’ve come from and where
I thought I was going to, head-first,
Full speed. I’ve left them my fingerprints,
My shoe size and at least a dozen
Molds of my face at different ages.
I’m planning to sit back and enjoy
A scandalous concoction of Perenelle’s devising –
She said it works miracles on the afterlife –
And watch them. Watch them as they
Re-assemble the trails and weave them
Into second-rate pillows for the decapitated.
They’ll have forgotten all about me…
They’ll have wept and swept and forgotten…
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 