Thinking of Mikhail Bakhtin
Saint Peter has grown horns,
and Dionysius, wears Italian moccasins.
Peasant are crowned, and kings revel
in shovelling manure.
Our lungs, instructed to know their place
for centuries, one day a year, inhale
as generously as whales inviting
schools of fish into their mouths.
Mothers dare their infants to fetch milk
from a stranger’s breast. and fathers
find no reason to protect
anything at all.
Tyrants can’t help crying at the suffering
of others, and lambs preside
over their own slaughter.
This is a day when Sisyphus
pushes his boulder up the steep hill
without breaking a sweat.
This is the insurrection
of what we learned to live with,
or took for granted,
but only the cat seemed at ease
licking a bone, and we missed
our gift to find fault with paradise.
Always suspicious of changes,
our lungs return, gratefully,
to their familiar short breath.