CAN

Duchampian incongruence among the pig fern,

a discarded tin zen-emptied of something.

Pithed husk, illegible label peeling off

a robot stripper, Helen of Alloy  more lasting

than Babylonian brick or Grecian urn as colophon

to our late capitalist Atlantis.

Stannic-plated steel, more  durable

than your aluminium cousins;

carbon, tin atoms forged in

the heart of a dying  star, iron

from a meteorite, torn up from

earth where lain since the sun coalesced

something intriguing from its retinue

of dust.

Half-burial here has spared it,

freed it from the karmic wheel

of endless recycling.

Gnomic ocular reckonings mosaic the still

mirror bright only slightly squashed

baroque elliptic cylinder (hauntingly in profile

like a kicked-in zygomatic bone) in creeping gamboge,

russet rust, cumbrous umber, and Martian nacarat

(rust never sleeps) where tin’s apotropaic

magic spottily failed, and foxing fawning

oxidation gnaws and nibbles like a decadence

through its  atomic empire.