The next poem is called "Aunt Rose."
"Aunt Rose."
"In a soldier's uniform, in wooden shoes,
she danced at either end of day, my Aunt.
Her husband rescued a pregnant woman from the burning house.
He heard laughter, each day's own little artillery.
In that fire, he burnt his genitals.
My aunt Rose took other people's children.
She clicked her tongue as they cried and August pulled
curtains evening after evening.
I saw her, chalk between her fingers.
She wrote lessons on an empty blackboard, her hand moved,
and the board remained empty.
We lived in a city by the sea, but there was another city
at the bottom of the sea.
And only local children believed in its existence.
She believed them.
She hung her husband's picture on a wall in her apartment.
Each month on a different wall.
I now see her with that picture, hammer in her left hand,
nail in her mouth.
From her mouth, a smell of wild garlic.
She moves toward me in her pajamas
arguing with me and with herself.
The evenings are my evidence, this evening in which she
dips her hands up to her elbows, the evening
is asleep inside her shoulder.
Her shoulder rounded by sleep."