HILDA HILST

"With my dog-eyes I stop before the sea,"

said HILDA HILST,

lapping at her bowl of laughing water.

she stood hallucinating driftwood!

said she heard a kitten roar

with a mighty menace,

and her body began shaking,

her fur covered in burrs and bloated ticks,

the putrid smell of dead fish sweating from her pores.

i asked her if she were a dog

and she said she didn't know.

she tried to bark but mere words

came out of her canine mouth!

she told me she was living in a foreign country

where dogs were nameless,

and she slept in an abandoned shack.

each night, she assured me, she saw ghosts

smearing blood on the naked walls,

wailing and full of spite, 

hateful and red-eyed.

but here, by the sea, the waves were free and

she felt temporarily at peace.

as she slept on the damp sand, i watched

as she scratched an itch.

the tide was wet and the night was black,

like her eyes.

in the morning, as she dug for a buried bone,

 the sun rose heavily in the air.