Past-Lives Therapy

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They explained to me the bloody bandages
On the floor in the maternity ward in Rochester, N.Y., 
Cured the backache I acquired bowing to my old master, 
Made me stop putting thumbtacks round my bed.

They showed me an officer on horseback,
Waving a saber next to a burning farmhouse 
And a barefoot woman in a nightgown,
Throwing stones after him and calling him Lucifer.

I was a straw-headed boy in patched overalls. 
Come dark a chicken would roost in my hair. 
Some even laid eggs as I played my ukulele 
And my mother and father crossed themselves.

Next, I saw myself inside an abandoned gas station 
Constructing a spaceship out of a coffin,
Red traffic cone, cement mixer and ear warmers,
When a church lady fainted seeing me in my underwear.

Some days, however, they opened door after door, 
Always to a different room, and could not find me. 
There’d be only a small squeak now and then, 
As if a miner’s canary got caught in a mousetrap.

© Charles Simic