"agrippa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson Walter)

under so rare and uncommon a patina
that many years untouched
until I took it up
and turning, entranced, down the unpainted
stair,
to the hallway where I swear
I never heard the first shot.

The copper-jacketed slug recovered
from the bathroom's cardboard cylinder of
Morton's Salt
was undeformed
save for the faint bright marks of lands
and grooves
so hot, stilled energy,
it blistered my hand.

The gun lay on the dusty carpet.
Returning in utter awe I took it so carefully up
That the second shot, equally unintended,
notched the hardwood bannister and brought
a strange bright smell of ancient sap to life
in a beam of dusty sunlight.
Absolutely alone
in awareness of the mechanism.