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Something Left Over
It must have been made
and rejected
in times grinding gears –
a knobby irregularity,
a leftover of smelt and dross.
This is all there is
a gobbet of oven clinker,
but behind it I sense cracked teeth,
soot seared across burnt eyeglasses,
blackened bones,
for after the gas came the flames.
Here it is,
a fragment long convulsed
from its own incineration,
an irregular rake-off, smithereens
dragged across a blind stone floor.
This tittle of slag once had to fit something
the rough rim of an iron door perhaps
behind which an old furnace
still cools in faraway minds.
A ferrous chip chiseled from a gulag,
or a souvenir from an SS campfire meet.
There is always something left
after the unthinkable,
always some spicule of irregularity,
detritus to explain or confound
as we toss it back into the fire again.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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