When I rented a small room
in the suburbs,
you were waiting for me
sitting on a chair,
or when I pulled back the sheet
in a dark hotel,
as a youth,
I didn’t find the scent
of the naked rose
but rather the cold whistle
of your mouth.
Poverty,
you followed me
through the barracks and the hospitals,
through war and peace.
When I got sick there was a knock
at the door:
it wasn’t the doctor, it was poverty
that entered again.
I saw you take out my furniture
into the street:
the men let it fall like a stone.
You, with a horrible love,
went making a toothless throne
from a discarded pile
and looking at the poor,
you picked up my last plate and made it a crown.
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