NO VICES

I have no vices.

I have no habits involving spices.

The salt which the villagers lick

Was mined in the blue Ran Da.

I stroll by the blue Sun River. Wines

Could be imbibed by those who go into the mines,

I don’t know. I make it a rule not to know.

I don’t like to stand in lines.

Coffee is out because it makes me shake.

Now a short conversation is a pleasant break

From my long ruminations. I like

To ask people what they don’t like.

But I don’t need to ask them what they don’t like.

They tell me what they don’t like.

I listen carefully to what they don’t like.

It helps not to be an expert on spices.

I protect myself with memory devices.

I perceive a life without fevers.

I never bother with insinuating lovers.

I breathe a walk by insouciant rivers,

The marshland where things go slow.

To be free of vice, I seek not to know,

But take pride, nonetheless, in knowing

Where the slow miners are going,

Knowing miners, in a fog, could go down,

Could trip, by a single vice, which can easily drown

Trillions. No vice is allowed, not one!

I have my marshland under the sun,

Or the mountains where I run.

Perhaps I have a vice, maybe one;

There is one habit where everything I think and do

Is to be calm; is this a vice?

Is this how I take my revenge against you?