When morning X-rays night... Poem by Malte Persson

When morning X-rays night
barely even a skeleton is visible:
white fish bones left in white sand.
So what cat came here
to indulge his taste
for rainbow-colored meat?

Ah, I mean: what sabre-toothed pet
have we, unknown to ourselves,
kept crouched inside our head…

The cyclops winks in his eye-socket cave.
The notepad kept beside the bed
is silent. Nonetheless, its stripes
alarm dawn's fossil hunters and those who fish
for the mother-of-pearl remains
of decomposed men's clothes.

In its hidden pocket the treasure map
stays unchanged but the landscape doesn't.
The dark is marbled by no mineral
worth mining: mica's mimicry
of gold, and glitter whirling
through the rolled up hours
in the lion's lair, where cool matter
is bloatedly digested behind rib blinds.
Brontosaurus weather outside.

Heavy billiard balls
are rolling over the dissection table
and through a thin slice of tropical fruit
streaks of body-warm light
make constellations of stone appear,

which a strangely uncontroversial tradition
gives names such as "The Encyclopedia",
"The Ice Pick", "The Unicycle",
and "The Great Night". O Great Night,

between whose paws
I am a worn ball
that bounces.

Translation: Hildred Crill & Malte Persson