Used, Good Condition
They’re more fables than stories –
he keeps referring to “the Tyrant”
and “henchmen.” The characters,
all very small-town, seem to want to
walk on all fours, if that’s
what Aesop creatures do, and talk like them,
naturally,
univocally. They cheered
the Tyrant, but that’s all in the past;
now nuclear weapons
a few miles east and west
of the village keep them honest.
(Some strangers appear, presumably
the heroes; seem human, don’t talk much.)
One or two critics
at the time spoke of kitsch, but
the guy who wrote the intro
dismisses them; he mentions all the right
Parisian names.
What bothers me, beside the brown and brittle
pages, is that everything is past –
in both text and intro
the Tyrant and his henchmen won’t
be back. A laundress, the blacksmith
say “guilt” at one point but
what’s going on is innocence. A sort of
fog seems to settle
over the words; the spine flakes.
So – back where it was
for more dust? It isn’t Ionesco or Beckett,
and one has to cull
before everything goes. Sometimes I browse
my own shelves without wanting to read.