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| Herbstlich - Atumnal 30 x 20 cm |
SOME LEAVES
Maternity
leave, sick leave, annual leave, an extended
leave of
absence (sounds like a corporate coup d’ etat,
the quiet extermination,
say, of a corner-office exec-
utive rat) planes
leaving airports only to arrive at
other, nearly
identical airports, children
on the
verge of leaving home the first time
and so many
people we know or don’t know, on the way
out as well,
some permanently, while others leap straight
into the
arms of some astonished Bayadere
on leave
from the corps d’ ballet of a “major” company,
and that
leaves Ingrid Bergman leaving Humphrey Bogart
at the end
of Casablanca blah-blah, or is it he
who leaves
her by staying behind with Claude Raines
though it’s
hard to believe there are still
people alive
who give a shit this way or that,
Nixon leaving
the White House aboard
Marine One,
a standard departure/arrival technology,
was pretty weird
and there
are the leaves of a maple dining-room table
opening
onto a sumptuous view of melted gorgonzola
on fresh spinach leaves
and the
only leaves outside right now are those leaves clogging
the drain
of my balcony—I almost wrote the “brain” of my
balcony—and
I once saw the tender mimosa
blossoms of
Marrakech which aren’t leaves at all, but I don’t care,
somewhere
in a canary yellow courtyard near the
souks, the
rug market I think, an orange tree in its
exact dusty
middle, and wish I’d never had to leave,
escorted
through graceful old age by fawning servants,
obedient
wives, and one tender if toothless household pet.
Verdi - Requiem Dies Irae e Tuba Mirum
