Night, and the coffers are empty.
An emerald in a truck rumbles away
to the other side of the earth.
A little girl with her pail and shovel packs up
while corpses revolve in the sea,
no more than a calvary of undulation.
Quite the bedtime story. Papa, what happens next?
Nothing much. We go to sleep,
the jewel comes back and all is well.
The little girl gets sandy building herself a home.
The corpses are clean as diamonds in a museum,
the kind that turn when you press a button
and an eerie green light shines down on them.
And when I sleep you peep in on me?
Yes, and you are safe as baggage in the hold
beneath a bus, and not one passenger knows
the lovely thing that shifts below
or cares what happens next.