A.
F. Moritz
Touring Machine
The philosophers are examining this man
who seems to be sleeping. To palpate
his soft tissues they have to kneel
around the old scratched walnut bed, hands in the tatters
of the tattersall, and to keep from waking
the subject they have to whisper - so low
that from a slight distance their words all sound like God
bless mummy and daddy . .. Now it's midnight,
two hours into the fearful experiment:
banyans, grasses like rock crystal sabres, spider plants
two hundred feet high have marched through the titanium doors
and grown over him. The boots of the learned
ur- theologians are filled up with scorpions.
The cure for malaria has been undiscovered
and those of them who have not died are drinking quinine,
shivering on a crumbled verandah. They trade
badinage with a consumptive young prostitute,
her song of hope wasted is far better than hope,
and they keep their minds on their work.
Now it's four a.m. and the subject has fallen
into a well. Nothing any more exists around him,
even his bed and his tormentors are gone
and he tumbles endlessly in wellness.
This is pictured by the instruments and the doctors watch it:
an image enhancement, that shows what it looks like
to live in utter darkness and be too small to be seen,
"looks like" here having to be taken in a special sense
