A Surgeon Extracting the Stone of Folly

Pieter Van Huys

Alas! If it were so easy.

The llama, orgulous of his orgle,

His fifteen minutes of fame, or his hour;

Our ornaments of desire that strangely lapse

With the mere shift of a species. And thus this day

Gray and still, and the morning incomplete.

But we are spirits of another sort, which is to say

That kindness walks among us, and grief,

And uncertainty about how to greet this guest.

Do we offer him a seat, hang his black

And faded hood up on the hat rack, stand his scythe

With the umbrellas? Do we distract him with a long discourse

Concerning the rights of vegetable loves?

He is obliging, to a point, but he has a job to do.

Count this love then in the hidden book, the ledger

Suspected in the jumbled shelves just glimpsed

Behind the scowling holder of the house. We can't help thinking

Even now, that someone older, more astute,

Must be keeping score.