Bad Alchemy - John Greaves

I dream Hermaphrodite and I sit up all night

Our eyes on the horizon of a wobbling bowl

Heads in hands we ponder dregs the bowl contains

A liquid’s left putrescence after being drained

What we feel we have to solve

Is why the dregs have not dissolved

When I wake I wonder what it means

Am I bad alchemy?

It seems

I image self unmixed, a risk

In a dish for drinking

Fluid with a strongly stinking sediment

Is that what it meant?

I dream Hermaphrodite and I sit up all night

Our eyes on the horizon of a wobbling bowl

Am I hermaphrodite?

Neither one nor quite the other?

What we feel we have to solve

Is why the dregs have not dissolved