Bad Dreams

The aged king
elected for one more sun year –
feels hid end drawing near.
The earth no longer brings forth millet,
the pumpkins by the river aren’t as juicy as before
and the buffaloes are getting thinner and thinner.
His weakness passes to the land:
he knows it.
He has not visited his woman’s quarters for a long time.
He dozes and murmurs, he waits
to hear the heavy footsteps at his door,
dark whispering,
the extinction of his fire.
And so we sit by cold stoves,
in the middle of winter, without hot tea,
by mute television sets, in the dark,
unable to read Eliot,
let alone to talk about Frazer.