Ode to Poverty (2)

 

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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