The afterlife of a genius
On the third floor
in dark suit and jester's cap
Kafka protects the family silver.
Orange and green parrots,
escaped from Paradise, pass
in and out of the veils
that flutter over the windows.
On this side
all the writings of the past
have become these floorboards
where life flows effortlessly
back and forth across
the simultaneously unfolding millennia.
The hunter Gracchus, cured,
is taking a long cool bath
after a spell in the warm summer nights of Italy.
The travelling grand Nature Theatre of Oklahoma
with its ballerinas and dancing horses
is now a music box on a small stand in the hallway.
Red Peter has moved into the bedroom
overlooking the fairy lights of the inner courtyard.
Enthroned in state, he receives the visits
of cousins and grandchildren as, one by one,
they materialize on the living room rug.
Meanwhile at the head of the dining-room table
Kafka lays out each place, apportions
the vegetarian feast and
in his delirious hands balances and pours
carafes of water that transmute to wine,
wine that transmutes to water,
perfected, completed at last,
his flawless body the other side of pain,
in the afterlife of a genius.
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