Borsch

Borsch

When I was sixteen

I spent two weeks in Normandie

studying Flaubert

with a scholar.

Her eyes were black and her front tooth was chipped

and all day long we’d look at manuscripts.

She’d squint to decipher blacked out scribbles

and her prune lips would purse and her cheeks would shrivel,

while I watched on, bored.

At night, she snored.

We never got anywhere.
At dinnertime we went downstairs

to eat and eat and eat.

The root in season was the beet.

To start with, we had borsch.

There never was another course.

Under scrutiny of beady eyes

I ate the soup; at least, I tried.

The house was cold.

She was so old.

Borsch was dinner every evening,

the next beet-flavoured day spent grieving

when food had tasted like food,

and waiting till my tastebuds renewed.

Sometimes there’d be a slice of bread

Marooned in the sea, wishing it were dead.

Every night was lost in borsch-blur

Like some ancient form of torture.

The purple devil cursed me till I wept

Mocking me even when I slept:

in my nightmares I held a glowing torch

over a swimming pool filled with fucking borsch

and I didn’t yet know why, I wasn’t any nearer

and Gustave’s writing wasn’t any clearer

it continued to get worse and worse

and I could only borsch and borsch

until one day it was over.