A CAZA DE DIENTES

A woman went hunting to find some gold
She found a hanged man strung up and cold
The wind gyrated and shook the old rope
The corpse did a jig that would not stop

So she waited until the strong wind went calm
And a voice in her head said: Proceed, Madame,
She went on tiptoe and stared in his face
For no one stood guard in the hanging place,
But o how terrible, o what terror
She felt when she gazed at the swollen cadaver
From the length of her arm at his bullfrogged eyes,
Tongue bloated up to thrice its size,
The face of a human, the face of a man
And yet so disfigured, the strung up one -
It made her feel helpless, queasy and weak
To think that the body might see her and speak

Would he be angry to know that she sought for
The gold in his mouth, incisor or molar?
She took the silk handkerchief out of her bodice
Held it before her, screen from his malice -
Corpses are harmless and yet they remind
How jealous the dead, how yet unresigned,
Hideous too when violence has pried
Breath from their bodies, light from their eyes -
But that was no reason for her to forestall
Her gaze from the carcass, it was nothing at all,
She had seen carcasses, plenty before
Since hanging and shooting abound in a war

Perhaps it was fear of herself not another
Because the cadaver was her own lover

A woman went hunting to find some gold
She found a hanged man strung up and cold…..

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