"Habitation of Dalmations" (Pessoa XX.)

Admixture of straw. Incendiary rebirth.
Into the realm of hungry ghosts you come
naked and twittering, full of the absent earth.

So long were you away, away from home.

And questions that no stuffed-straw scarecrow fields
arrive by ev'ry channel of turbid sense.
No use to fight the pain, no use to yield.

Where vict'ry is a laughable pretence

the beast that runs beside me · you were lost
before the ship set sail · your hands forgot
the secret of how to fix · jib halyard tossed
corrugated mongrelization thought
and what is behind thought · acrobat adobe
the octopus frontier, astringent, frothy. [thee]


Qantara thread on Metafilter.