I had thought I was decently perched on the street’s bank
When I felt the fluttering termination
Of a helpless brown leaf, sturdy, but brown.
And with such a self-emanated zeal
Did I reach forward from my knees to pluck the thing
From its grounds.

And yet the humiliation lightly tapped,
Enclosed,
And seeped unto me.
With my index finger—noble and nimble—
Did I make such sudden contact with its erotic fur
And have it reveal itself to be a dead moth.
Too late, however; withheld in my grasp,
My subservient thumb did suddenly fool the edge of its wing
And easily break it; pluck it, it must have thought,
And only then, with an Oedipal conscience,
The parasitic chain-reaction of thoughts that drain,
Could my gaze into its peering, pale eyes
Further encroach me daringly into guilt,
Only feeling that its clutching femurs and tarsi would now want to cling on to me forever.

And I could know forever that swarms of moths, of locusts,
And of butterflies, would insurrect at that moth’s unfounded grave, never mounded in the gutter,
And never will I go forward again, without the moth’s court,
The courts of ancient gods, nobly acknowledging sin,
Consenting that freedom is of no price,
Of only natural instinct,
Of only natural instinct.
Had I not shrugged my shoulders then, I would have forgotten and been self-forgiven.