Nectar And Ambrosia Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Lament, lamentation, it’s a disgrace, the great
Madame de la Pompadour complains her car’s
wipers’ not working - electrical problems, the
back-yard mechanics claim: take out sackcloth
and strew ashes over our heads, lift voices in
sad song to resound in the metaphorical gates
of our language citadel – all because sadly

our great manage-administrator & high-ranking
official as well as her own Mother Superior, whom
Mme suspects of dark deeds committed in secret
because she’s imitating long-distance managing
of our own esteemed, respected and lauded Mme,
ah, greatness, oh Their Excellencies – both of our
Super Superiors, VIP’s at every event and in

management, are involved in greater things than
the lowly day-to-day duties here in the open-plan
office where Mme la Pompadour still spurns her
special office isolating her from the noise and heat
shared by the rest of us immolated in the clucking
chicken coop where we live and work – oh, how
hallowed these Great Ladies who tread on

celestial stairs to bring down nectar and ambrosia
which we never get to see, but which they truthfully
claim they keep for Armageddon – we shall not be
found wanting when the final trumpet is blown and
the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse ride out, they say,
we shall join them like real Valkyries and then our
true value will be seen – indeed, indeed, oh great

and majestic leaders of our little people, assembly-
line-translators and humble language-practitioners
like Tibetan chelas in a monastery like me, destined
to never rise higher than the 2 inches I’ve made and
leopard-crawling, floor-kissing when the officials pass
who check my inadequate work which is changed
line for line to be correct in their astounding -

elevated minds; oh, with Voltaire’s Candide I can only
declare, this is the best of all possible worlds! And thus
stops the song of the flibbertigibbet and kissing the floor
I return to my Dutch document waiting like a wide-open
mouth ready to swallow me whole…