Look up into the stunning roof of stars
Perhaps it has a skylight
Window or a short-cut black-hole portal
The fire-place in the hearth
Of living earth contains
Surprising sudden cinder uprisings
In this land of lost content
Cities fall to contest
Vying to be voted ‘happiest’
Grass alas grows only
Greener in another
Star valley distant galaxy of folly
Here in the house of the poet however
See the inlaid table and its scars
Scratched and pencil-patched by compasses of childhood
Now open all the drawers
Just how did he preserve
Himself and such extinct exotic herbs?
This olive-stone still speaking
Ancient Aramaic of the desert
From his creaking wheezing rib-cage cabinet?
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Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer
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