Lucía M. Polis The Poetry of

There are two types of despair:

                                              In the first,
you raise your eyes to an extinct god and
inquire the reason for all this. You

politely ask: Would it not be far more
easy to extinguish this collection

of fears and pains, first from the smouldering
matchhead, then, held by legs, as Dante would

have it, until charred black?

                                              In the second,
you have thirty minutes before a call
for work, when you plug up your toilet with

shit. With the dejection of Mersault, you
get your plunger, then the better one; to

no avail, and then—with all hope lost—you
plunge,                                   you hear

the water rush clear, so you

                                        fall to your knees,
              thank the ghost.