Sou Vai Keng’s ‘the past smells of something rotten’

from art of ignorance

like an apple
fallen on a late summer day
buried under a shroud of
dead leaves

a horse carrying a small girl
carelessly steps on it
seeds, exposed, dry
under violent sun

two days later
rain nurtures everything
including maggots

at last reduced into a form
unrecognizable
apple is no more, until

a poet passes by
looks at the tree
up and down
thinks deep into the roots
and writes down the past that
smells of apples
rotten and forgotten