Venice masks

Wednesday 26 April 2017

Flying-Fox - Albert Wendt

More rat than bird,
more superstition than fox,
you hang from that banyan
branch like a deflated black
umbrella and, when you flap
through the sky across a waxen
moon and the dead rise up
to haunt me, you’re more
real than Batman.

With your razor-sharp teeth
you eat the ripe mangoes
and pawpaw in my plantation;
but wait until I catch you:
I’m going to skin you, gut you,
roast you, and eat you.
I’ll enjoy the eating because
I’ll be chewing Batman,
Count Dracula, and all superstitions
about vampires.

Albert Wendt (born 1939) Samoa
Source: Scottish Poetry Library

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