Put down your puppet and billy club, Birna,
and come to dinner. Your royal cup flows
with berry juice and gems. There are pickled eels
here, red-orange wings of bantam fowl, mushrooms
from the forest, and green fronds. The creatures
who tended them are curled beside the plate.
 
Use your stout little hands
to crush puppet, who recently leaned,
languid on the eyelid. A whip crack
approach has shut
 
down. The cypress throne
is yours now, Birna, and the rooms can be
as cold as you like. Let puppet cough. For you: a stand
of fleeced pines, bear rug, mouthfuls of fish from every
sea. You can dream of stars here, and of your ancestors,
and all the animals in the tenderized kingdom—