Natura Morta. Garbage lying in the streets, loose, no bins.
Sun is rising. Rats are still. This picture is without smell.
But at midnight the work began, accumulation reviewed
for what waste would be turned into hunger. Cats agree.
Furtive looks from out of nowhere people will admit,
who only wish for disappearance, left at the side of the road.
We mostly don't know any better now. We throw away
in equal amounts what we love and hate and fear too late
and so it rots. So much late heat it makes: perfect comment.
And other rats that scavenge after? We don’t believe in that.
Sun rises faster. Dogs are moving too, looking and judging,
experience that wasn’t theirs but they try hard to want it.
Before collection. Before anticipation, the sweepers' carts
and big trucks, the recycling starts. An Easter-time of insects
to make the refuse-body One, spirits a-buzzing, lives afresh.
There’s argument. Purposes conflict. Sun is higher than ever.
The goal has been dispersed. The garbage has walked away.
How else to measure the soul that’s lost, than when all is still?
When Morning comes, the streets eventually swept of us,
the nocturnal organization of vehicles disconnected, down
we climb from the bed where we had written of paradise.
Maybe. Walking down an alley last night. Ripped of memory,
the key ingredients gone, one word came a-hastening of love
so ordinary now it's missed. Creatures gather everything.
©ROB SCHACKNE (2007)