Still Life

With one brushstroke, it becomes spring.

                        Berries in a wooden bowl.

Some tulips, a limp sturgeon, a goblet of wine.
Roman bricks in the foundation of a church.
One leather glove still looking for a hand.

A surprise, that being born we forget
almost everything needed to survive.

Security guards wait at the green gate
not knowing that sunlight over the wall
ignites their haloes of cigarette smoke.



                        —Bucharest, 2008