The Cabinet-Maker

after Alois Sauter

Virtue through vice,

the cabinet-maker's life

is metaphored in wood.

Rib-starving is carving

his mahogany dog,

and a whiskery shaving

purrs, closing an eye

round his wife

dribbling beer.

His belly and the bags

under her eyes are age-rings. Witness,

her tissue roses

blow dusty and their bread

needs sawing. Somewhere out there

his table is for a lady with carved legs,

but he lives with his itch,

he'll make beauty and sell it,

without knots

of metaphor,

slipped chisels

of simile.

In Scottish Literary Journal

ed. Thomas Crawford 1983