BUTTERFLIES
They look like stamps
from countries that hardly exist: Honduras, Guatemala,
San Salvador. Instead of being franked
they lie upon the franks of flowers.
Sometimes they are lured to alight
on the flowers of the linen
covering the garden table in summer.
The children clap their hands:
the butterflies act like clowns before them
balancing on the rims of glasses
that contained sweet juice.
They look like clips from old encyclopedias
showing parts of sailing boats, mysterious castles,
and other naïve contraptions from previous centuries.
They explain nothing
but different things. They look like
labels of various products
whose shelf life has long expired,
like catalogue ads for shopping malls that closed long ago:
they could easily be glued on Christmas presents,
fancy toys, small vials
of vaporized perfumes. Sometimes they are like those
stickers that were sold
in the dark dilapidated corner shops of our childhood
that we never knew
what to do with
so we stuck them
on empty pages of poetry books.
Whether due to pesticides or to other inventions
they are now less and less among us, as you may have noticed:
as are, in fact, all other beautiful things
that have silently been proclaimed unnecessary ornaments.