This is perhaps cheating as I actually wrote it some time ago, but
since the subject of the poem is due to have his surgery this Thursday
I thought it could pass. We'll be in Oslo for the week keeping an eye
on him at the hospital.
Cleft
Dear boy,
it was decided
when seven weeks had passed
that your lips should not fuse
but keep a trace of the embryo about them.
I’d gravitate towards metaphor,
but this vacancy
is not to be compared. Already
"vacancy" crouches in,
as if something were missing and the skin
that lines the space between
should have been otherwise.
In the line of his chin lies couched
the wrinkle of a tortoise neck,
straight from the deep.
But what passes between
the elemental lamps of the surgery
and the eyeball, so widely grown
in its infant head? What voice whispers
between the morphine and the blood?
None. No voice. It’s nothing.
Only to be changed and lifted away
from oneself so soon.
--kms, Trondheim/Oslo, 15/03/06
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