FRIDAY

Friday
And a stale kind of weather.
Wood floors shine like mirrors,

And in them,
The women see they have aged.
Is the skin on the back of their hands
Slack?
Are their cheeks growing pleated?

And so they begin
In house after house, shades drawn,
Each housewife bends over her table
Until it blooms with scowling moons.

She paints more and more,
She hangs them on a thin line to dry,
And her back aches,
Her eyes burn,
Her hands cramp to claws.

A planetary wind howls through each house.
The longer they paint,
The colder it gets.
The longer they paint,
The less age weighs on them.

Once, it is said,
A husband left a wife in the morning
And at night, found an infant
Playing with the brushes and paints.
She did not know him.

In this town,
Old ladies who fear nothing,
Not even their own death's heads
Which scowl at them from the mirror
Grow more and more rare.

At night, in long white gowns,
In bare feet,
They walk the silent common,
Short-sighted, bespectacled;

They see the clock faces of stars,
Claim to hear their cold, treacherous tickings.
What was that shadow on the floor?
As the children.
Who cast it?

Once, there was a man, who grew old,
Who threw out his wife
Saying she was a child
And how many times
Could a man read the very same lines?

The women didn't think twice.
The men offered no help.
The women stoned him.