Scraps of Gold

They look neither greedy nor held in thrall
by the ten thousand things of life, though
their postures make them seem sold out.

Tonight the two sit at their kitchen table,
stuff pieces of broken gold in a padded
envelope, and do not try to make
the past better than it actually was,
for the hour is late.

If they believe themselves to be figures
in a medieval woodcut, hermetic
or commonplace, they aren’t saying.

If one has weighed a piece in a
graduated cylinder while the other marked
its density, mass over volume,
or streaked a porcelain cup for proof,
it isn’t obvious.

They might be here together reading
the catechism of Paracelsus,
or at the beginning of their financial
meltdown.

I don’t know if the man really expects
fair value for the Neil Young broken heart
of gold locket, the three-legged golden
calf charm, the battered golden sombrero
ashtray, or is sad because the G-Pak
he received from Faust & Co.—Gold
Broker to the Stars—won’t hold his magnum
opus, his mutus liber, illustrating
the dialectics of the Unconscious.

I’ve heard there is dross of all kinds that can
be turned into cash, but don’t ask me to know
if the fires burning in Gehenna,
stretching from the foot of Mount Zion eastward
to Kidron Valley, burn away what
the trailer trash left behind.

Of this man, who might have committed heresy
during the Inquisition and qualified
for the rack or stack, and this woman,
who probably saved her first grader’s dried-up
stars and fed the table scraps—like gold they
were—to her little dog, what have you heard?

They will pay lip service to wisdom,
and speak of gold metaphorically to
accept their failure.

But I wonder: is it allegorical
or obvious, perhaps just tv ad
nonsense, when the woman lays a golden
egg for the man to swallow whole?

Do they glow from the alchemy of love,
or moan au au auauau over
the element of their desire?

How often have I been conjured by them?

Am I hammered until I bend, or
until I bite my very own tail?

Is this the Faust & Co. Scrap Gold
Refinery, or the fiery furnace
of a medieval woodcut?

Is this their scrap gold or mine?