ONE OF TWELVE

When he called me, he called me his lover:
entrapped me in his cloak of Tyrean purple.

He dipped his bread and fed me,
"Is it me, Lord?” I asked.
He kissed me, and sighed, and said "Yes".

His breath was a whiff of burnt rubber
that hung round my head as a flaming tyre.

Now I hang by my heel on the pathway,
counting time between death and the lion:
hang here, accurséd, and smile.

First published in right hand pointing 

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpissue37/home

Also in Serbian translation in ARS 4|'10
trans. Lena Rut Stefanović

A little bit of Turkish: Aslan (Lion) Yatmak (to lay down)

Aslan yattığı yerden belli olur.

You can tell a lion from where it lies.

C. S. Lewis wrote: "I found the name in the notes to Lane's Arabian Nights': it is the Turkish for Lion. I pronounce it Ass-lan myself. And of course I meant the Lion of Judah." Letters to Children p.29