The Cabbage

You have rented an apartment. You come to this enclosure with physical relief, your heavy body climbing the stairs in the dark, the hall bulb burned out, the landlord of Greek extraction and possibly a fatalist. In the apartment leaning against one wall, your daughter's painting of a large frilled cabbage against a dark sky with pinpoints of stars. The eager vegetable, opening itself as if to eat the air, or speak in cabbage language of the meanings within meanings; while the points of stars hide their massive violence in the dark upper half of the painting. You can live with this.