Hiding behind the theory of mirth is my pain,
Lying prostrate before death’s agonizing smile;
The smile, my eyes often fail to see;
And I keep hovering over versions of me

Me is a cold, old metaphor of rain,
A dead alley for the harking pebble,
A smoking fog off the King’s bloody hand
Around the dainty neck of my homeland

As I look at her beauteous gritty nose,
The walking smile wades through to her eyes;
She fixes me, unseeing: looking yonder through me;
Her arcane pain serenely solidifies into tears

As you jovially pass away through me,
I wonder who your tears shall atone,
Who shall sniff the miasma of your metaphors,
Inter your dead letters, your speaking eyes?

The King’s specious power is thee worked;
The writer’s impetus is thee caught;
The child’s life is on thee dependent;
…
The tremors of the dying body
Wriggle free out of my soul
Every instant sloughs off into spleen;
And I becomes wife, mother, king and queen