In a kitchen where mushrooms were washed

In a Kitchen Where Mushrooms Were Washed

In a kitchen where mushrooms were washed,

the mushroom scent lingers.

As the sea must keep for a long time the scent of the whale.

As a person who’s once loved completely,

a country once conquered,

does not release that stunned knowledge.

They must want to be found, those strange-shaped, rising morels,

clownish puffballs.

Lichens have served as a lamp-wick.

Clean-burning coconuts, olives.

Dried salmon, sheep fat, a carcass of petrel set blazing:

light that is fume and abradement.

Unburnable mushrooms are other.

They darken the air they come into.

Theirs the scent of having been traveled, been taken.