"Judith Merril - Auction Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

entertainment while they wait
for an appropriate enticing cry
to prick them back to business from the auction block.

Some kindly souls,
instinctively protective-masculine,
stop to direct—or help
it to the crowded stalls:
a woman lost should be
returned to cover:
this one, in proper form,
might be a piece worth bidding
high and paying pretty for.

A few rude fellows rub against it now and then,
thinking, a woman-body for the asking:
but these are frightened easily by conversation
and stumble off pulling their pockets for the price
of something satisfying to a man's desires.

A curious creature:
not for sale;
yet not free.
Nor can it understand why,
being already among the men,
it must depart and make
a journey back on some one
single arm: selected,
signed and sealed—and delivered?

The men are wiser:
they are familiar
with profit as a function
of possession: happiness
surely lies in what they call
their own.

The curious creature mingling
in their midst will not
be owned.

They fondle it in passing,
smile and speak perhaps, pass by:
press forward to compete then bids
for proper women on the auction block.