Friday 6 December 2013

A poem by the Dutch writer
Anneke Brassinga


Rosie’s oration


Ever seen a wrinkled sea-gull? Wrinkly sea, yes, stone
and bone, but walled-eye horse, hollow-gob donkey
no. Well, help each other keep peepers skinned! Fair to assume

humanity exists as species? Not as yet satisfactorily demonstrated
by independent sources, it being much too intersubjectively
limited, with bulging eyes copiously magnifying vain dazzling

can never plainly be concluded – without one contribution
of potencies dormant in wintering sugar beet as well as
the industrially freeze-dried tea rose – that dubious parasite,

conceitedly believing its own word, has the right to posit itself.
Well now, it unmistakably would seem related to the rose: it too
becoming crumpled in its utmost state, and shedding

sweet tears even, before the final snap. Likewise geranium and jasmine.
In short, QED: humanity, no, merely an overwhelming
quantity, falling outside all botanical categories, consequently

rushing around in panic, bellicose, in earliest
and final stages abusively not clinging to the illusory
public spirit, sweetly vegetating as seen fit, specimens.

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