Tom's Swiss Cure

 

Let us take Tom’s Swiss Cure:

look at the mountains beyond the lake

as we come up for the last time, for air

 

                                 - we dare

to strive, to stay alive, despite

a tragedian’s death-wish

to drown ourselves in the Styx;

to cross Charon’s palm

with a counterfeit obol,

at last

 

                     - fast-tied against the mast

like Odysseus listening to the siren song

of mermaids or manatees

[I have heard them and

they have driven me mad].

 

 

      Bad, as I am inclined to be,

I will not swim in an inland sea

rather fly above it seeking caves

of Al a Dín, Saladín and Bin Ladén

- the evil ones – who find us equally so.

 

 

                                                           Was there love?

What girl can be a flower? What flower can be a girl?

A water lily? The frog prince sits on a lily pad,

glad of any number of kisses from any princess

or pauper girl selling matches in the gutter.

 

 

                                       And all the words,

every one impersonal: see! The very word

contains a clue, every poet is an imp

and the poet is the poem, after all.

 

                                   Thus we are cured,

of a sudden, as the clock strikes thirteen

and we shall scatter our verses into the wind.

 

Shan’t we?

          Shan’t we?

                  Shan’t we?