On the second day of the Future Doris Putz called out, ‘Can you lock the door?’
Due to an acclivity in the landscape the door had a proclivity toward falling shut. He was
halfway down the doorsteps as the front door slammed.
‘I’m going now!’ For a moment he watched Doris puttering in the garden.
‘Is the door locked?’
He twisted his key - ‘Yes, Frau Putz.’ His landlady - remembering his promise to help plant
a tree. He rented the mansard roof.
‘Verflucht nochmal! Du Mistvieh! (Curses again! You dung-beast!)’ she castigated a rosebush
for pricking her.
‘Buy a nice sapling,’ he muttered, ‘from the Baumschule (tree nursery).’
Doris did not answer and he judged himself acquited.
‘What did you say? You must talk louder, Mr. Foster, or I will be unable to reply to you.’
‘There was a loose floor board!’ he said louder.
She came over to him. He waited at the gate.
‘Blunt.’ Pruning shears.
‘Secateurs.’ Secateurs was French.
(Crimp crimp.) ‘Gartenschere. I heard you singing inside.’
‘Rezniček.’ (Donna Diana.)
‘You have a lovely voice. My husband used to play the piano,’ she reminisced. ‘Godowsky.’
‘Doris, I’m translating the libretto.’
‘I know that.’
He drew in his breath and breathed out again, slowly. ‘Last night, I knocked askew a floor
board with my shoe accidentally. In the X-posed gap underneath the board I found a diary.’
‘Are you sure? A diary?’
Ninety-four percent sure. A poem dislodged and fled behind the king post.
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Roses are nice
Violets are too
Olives are green
I love you thrice
L., I. O. U.
© anonymous, 19??
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