Miroslav Low's Poetry

miro fancies himself as a bit of a poet. it's difficult trying to write poetry as someone else. i remember reading poems in a.s. byatt's books where she writes as someone else and wondered how you do it. i realised all that you need to do is write it. it's ridiculous. there was no transmigration of souls or metampsychosis necessary. or maybe there was. it just seems to happen the way other things that should be difficult 'just happen.'

I

The sky was Prussian;
the wan sun splashed cream on the western world,
and all the lights were on in the house.

He wrapped his legs around a coffin-shaped bookcase,
setting the ebonized wood of the cabinet alight
with a brush dipped in dark amber paint.

He had gutted the interior then resurected it;
the oustide black, the inside red;
an empty box of chocolates.

II

The walk back home was always saintly
in the presence of a God he didn't believe in,
a walk back from the silver gullotine
that fell on the horizon.

One bit of admin under his belt,
a penis and a day,
he was a hero in his underclothes,
a ghost in grave clothes.

The gewgaws in the charity shops
now looked more appealing,
with only three days
before the cheque could be cashed in.

Three purgatorial days
of the endless stretch of a plain white loaf,
before gold and its ants
would run over his hand.

'It's green, blue and yellow here, I hear they say it looks 'natural','
he said in his head as he painted the shelves, and:
'Buddhism's good for Buddhists and animals.'

although it is not mentioned in the book, miro had been listening to a lot of early leonard cohen that day. he had taken a bookcase from his father's junk shop and was wondering what to do with it and what to put in it (books he himself had written?). as is often the case with sensitive young men, this quickly became a meditation on death.