They All Love My Baby

On those crutches you’re about a beauty.
About a circle, in a circle of crucifixes.

Gazes flexing at joints, at books of skin, sampling.
Abnormalities and deformities, a sylph smiles

from the Reichstag’s elaborate iron balcony.
The procedure wasn’t expected to be so lengthy.

An endless twilight crossing, wet joints, skin,
arthritic, huddled, cards in a heaving sampan.

She smiled is all that made the montage.
They thought they ought to have killed her then.

Might’ve done so, but the weapons were too soft.
And the fact that she had no money.

Some information was spilled, tour guides
know the spots, or bend them to vendors’ benefits.

Money, after all, has changed its perspective.
Forget that we had a kingdom, this man is not the king.

Several of the nobles still visit her body.
The caretaker’s buy-off varies by their horses.

Her crutch moves more freely now, forms
more inventive, elaborate shapes.

Like the outline of a drowning faun,
or the smiles of fever victims.