Martin Ott
Fools of Ship
— After Ship of Fools, Hieronymus Bosch
This voyage on a dying earth is not an ark designed to save us from the sky upside down. We break bread and it spurs a tidal wave, invisible as sea on salt. The mast is an ancient tree we mount to slice the sail with a feather. No permission from the deck for this takeoff. The rudderless feast and hidden beasts breathe in the gold leaves, wind hissing “In God We Trust.” The damned hum the crew ballad, folly of an endless cruise, flotsam of rapture. We are in a whirlpool with jaws stretched to swallow the news, the decay of our rule in bloodless hues and shorn art. Five hundred years or yesterday, nothing shifts in endless queues, except for writers and lost watches, every last trick to piece it together.
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