As he lies mid his retinue of rats, <br />oblivious to the trickling water <br />and the maelstrom in the babbling sewer, <br />one might think his nose a hovel for flies <br />in the low and oppressive August heat, <br />but gladly he sleeps the sleep of the just, <br />like a foetus double-crossed in the womb. <br /> <br />Who but the passing ethereal white clouds, <br />or the bent proprietress of a dive <br />in those drunken days before her passing, <br />ever noticed to care by whim or chance <br />how he resembled a pigeon walking <br />in the ocean of misery and mud <br />neighbouring the cathedral of the damned? <br /> <br />Or how he spit when he spoke over bowls <br />of steaming porridge in the good hospice <br />run by six eternally stoned eunuchs, <br />his words brilliant as moonshine through stained glass, <br />simple as the stars in their begging truth, <br />though none and all understood their meanings <br />by the soft intonations of his grunts? <br /> <br />And now for the umpteenth and final time <br />he lies high in a heap like a dunghill <br />waiting for the street-cleaners to clean him up, <br />the sun bursting through his shuttered eyelids, <br />his eardrums full of Gregorian chants, <br />while the rats scurry like flawed apostles <br />in the wake of flapping but broken wings… <br /><br />Leo Yankevich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/quasimodo/
