Midas

Not just golden hair, golden wheatfields and golden wine,
but golden spiderwebs, golden cornflowers, golden doves:
everything, anything at all, becoming bankable — even
the cockroach waiting in a finger of the royal glove:
spy into scarab.
Gold-fleshed women flashed their million-dollar smiles —
so much brightness! He wore sunglasses: which turned
opaque, glittered heavily. At night, clamped to chill
lumps, he felt his room, the very air, begin to shine
through blackness.
Bread as inedible as stone … But still more punishing was
the brightness! In the stream's dark absolution he rests,
steps into an ordinary day, with the sun's radiance
reaching out from so far away: tentative, soft —
a beggar's touch.