Butter by Finuala Dowling | Poems Rethabile Likes
Butter
by Finuala Dowling
You know how it is sometimes with butter?
How after a free fallow period, you long for it,
how it lies shaded in its pale, soft firmness,
how it calls to you quietly from its cool clay dish
until at last you give in, you make toast:
you don't even want the toast —
burnt crumbs mean nothing to you —
but you but you but you want the butter.
Well, that's how it was with you.
I'm saying this in as plain a sliced way as I can —
there may after all be children present:
you were any old slice of toast.
I can't be more explicit than this;
I can't slick this on any thinner.
You may have thought you were the butter
but you weren't: you were the toast.
How after a free fallow period, you long for it,
how it lies shaded in its pale, soft firmness,
how it calls to you quietly from its cool clay dish
until at last you give in, you make toast:
you don't even want the toast —
burnt crumbs mean nothing to you —
but you but you but you want the butter.
Well, that's how it was with you.
I'm saying this in as plain a sliced way as I can —
there may after all be children present:
you were any old slice of toast.
I can't be more explicit than this;
I can't slick this on any thinner.
You may have thought you were the butter
but you weren't: you were the toast.
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