Merchant of odor

Separations humors places humid
Everything faces off moves off
Long made corrupt by his worshipers
He sells his honor or his conscience

 

Expiation of the past like an impure liquid
Every day applied workmanlike
The scaffold eyes your companion
       A bit too much and everything goes dark

 

Make necessary the yellow-colored plant
Make indispensable the beam of the scale
Tipped already toward nuisance

 

Inexpressible like the preceding
The shopkeeper plies his deadly trade
He vaunts his inexcusable merchandise
He vends on an empty beach

 

The gambler with resignation
Crushes the dice in his hand for the fourth time
That roll on the table in a straight line
       To this point pal

 

Paul Novis