Sanda Ionescu

First the little slip.

Name much praised

Now remembered slightly awry

Like a jigsaw piece chewed and frayed

Not quite fitting in its groove

Then a petulant rewrite

Of yesterday’s events;

Fat-lipped travesty

Bearing no semblance, no cause, no fruit.

Too stubborn to admit

That all is haze and indifference.

Then the heartbeat stop

Before mad scrabble

And dig and delve

That elusive frame

In the broken film of the mind.

Then the chasms beckoning:

Throw self in?

Chuck pretence out?

Make way for shadows,

Population of yesteryear?

Darker and darker

The woodland cover.

Hunched, stop-cock breathing,

Waiting for the highly elliptical orbit to cease.

The lynx-bared jaw of foaming bite

And fixed clear eyes of poison fire.

Precarious rock after rock

The chamois cleared.

But only just.

Next day

Next week

Its foothold less secure,

Chasms closing in-

Beckoning pools of blankness.

Promenons nous dans les bois

Pendant que le loup n’y’est pas.

Si le loup y etait,

Il nous mangerait…