Even the American President is not God.
I discover this fact while standing
On a nude beach, by a (hopefully) dead volcano.
It has taken millions of years to say that certainly,
Lava will not overflow onto the town below,
The grape vodka stalls, the old women selling lavender,
The clubs radiating eurotrash techno, or life as we know it.
What can you expect from a single oil company?
Even the American President is not God,
Says the priest on the other end of the line.
It’s still summer here, I am doing interviews
Up to my ankles in seawater.
Never forget to be grateful, says the priest.
(I don’t see the point of mentioning that I am on a nude beach –
Though something tells me he won’t be awfully disapproving,
Just mildly so.)
Details of the Gulf get their edges worn down,
Like pieces of bottle glass – the Old Gulf as we knew it
Won’t be waiting for me. I keep whatever is left of it
In the wrinkle that emerges between the eyebrows
Whenever conversation, going over mountain, sea and steppe,
Meanders back to sobriety.
The Old Gulf is like a first wife – lying somewhere
In a chaise lounge, round sunglasses briefly able to contain
Medusa’s eyes.
Well, her outrage is well-deserved, I’d say.
God’s ways are not our ways –
It rains on Pakistan, boys by a Moscow metro station sing “Ring of Fire” –
But the Gulf glares back at a NASA satellite with its cataract,
With a look that says: there are no accidents, no coincidences.