When I come to that mood called life
from the squeaky pathetic robot that I am turned into
I pity myself for not touching your fingers
when they were still resting on the handrails,
before they flew away as cranes into the crimson evening.
I could have crouched behind the blackened iron rails
and watch you fly to the Americas
but I was weak enough to turn my eyes
into two pieces of little lenses.
With those magnifying glasses I wandered gathering insects
and in my nights I dissected them to see their entrails
and in my days I fixed them with pins in glass cases
and my hands which were so close to yours once
are now nothing but steely forceps of sickening smells.
