Undying. Michel FaberЧитать онлайн книгу.
umpteen skies and oil rigs manifest
before us as you sip your drink. You note
the ones that might be worth the paper and the ink.
Then you begin to print. Most likely until dawn.
In your world, Art is never virtual.
It’s physical, a thing; it can be held,
you are compelled to make it real.
By morning, there’ll be rejects cluttering the floor
and you will ask me which, of several contenders,
is ideal. We’ll be agreed. This is ‘the one’.
The one which, when you’re gone, will bear the seal
of your approval.
If someone, passing by, observed us chatting,
they’d think we’re making no big deal of this.
A few prints shifted to one side, an omelette, a kiss.
Right There On The Floor
In our twenty-six years together,
we did some mighty intimate stuff.
But I don’t believe we ever
pushed it further than the time
you sat stripped to the waist
on a chair in our bedroom,
me standing behind you
with scissors in my hand,
you looking straight ahead
at the Edinburgh rooftops
saying ‘Do it. Just do it.’
And those locks of limp dark hair
that still remained, plastered
to your pale and chemo-blasted skull –
I took them in my fingers, lifted them,
and meticulously
de-sexed you.
Remission
You have achieved zero.
We celebrate with a lunchtime special
at the Thai, on the way home from the hospital.
You order Tom Kha Gai because
your red cell distribution width
is now 15 (as near to normal
as makes no difference).
You choose the crispy fish because
your lymphocytes are 1.6.
The waitress pours your jasmine tea
because your neutrophils are 3.
We pay extra for some greens
because your glomerular filtration rate
is more than 60 ml per minute
(admittedly an estimate).
We share banana fritters because
your albumin is 40 grams per litre.
Brand new hair – ink-black and curly –
springs forth because your creatinine
stands at 69 micromoles.
After dessert, we order coffee.
Let everything settle.
Your paraproteins
are immeasurably small.
You have achieved zero.
Which is to say, the cancer in your marrow
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