Translation

Now the aureate dawn breaks

The golden dawn breaks
As the malingerer nests

As the woman who pulled a sickie curls up on the sofa
Macerating alone

wasting away alone
Upon every surface a plant etiolates

Gasping for light

There are plants on the shelves going yellow because they haven't got access to light
in the carceral environment

In the prison-like room

The tightly drawn curtains
seal out the air
but photons nudge their way through the weave

particles of light filter through the fabric
until
exhausted by their journey through the ecotone

the transition between the environments uses up all their energy
they briefly enjoy a terpsichorean freedom before falling

they dance briefly before falling
to the floor

Beyond its frame the incohate conurbation

Beyond the window frame the city that has been a slumbering shell
of ten days lies sequacious

for 10 days now succumbs
to the demands of commuters, the clerisy and canaille

to the demands of commuters, the intelligensia and the commoners

The longueur of her holiday was

Her holiday had been long enough to get boring
behind her
But her effrontery had wangled this extra

But her cheek (in pulling a sickie) had bought her an extra day

longing for an opportunity to suffer again

Because she'd rather be bored than at work
before returning to the banausic state of being

before going back to working for a living
to playing deuteragonist in her own life

where she feels she plays a minor role in her own life story

Her extemporaneously delivered excuses had been thin

Her off the cuff excuses were rubbish
as paper
but were accepted by her venal manager

but her manager is easily bribed
who took mythomania alongside regular cake supplies

and allows the exaggerated claims of illness on the understanding she'll get cake
now the vorago between her and the return to her factotum role

Now the chasm between her and her dull general office busybody role
seemed harder to cross than ever
this time she had snaffled must be worth it

this stolen time must be spent well

Reluctantly active, she takes up the masscult billet-doux

Lazily, she picks up the newspaper (literally mass-media loveletter)
from Rupert Murdoch
dismissing the retrodiction and fanfaronade

She doesn't bother reading the news or opinion pieces
turns to the crossword
for her regular cathexis to cryptic chaos

for her regular commitment to figuring out the cryptic crossword
Within moments her MacGuffin

This is a pun: the cat is called MacGuffin, but a MacGuffin is also a secondary character that makes things happen
recognising the signs
takes advantage of the ailurophile's stillness

The cat notices she's settled
to advert his own presence

and jumps on her to get attention

Startled by the arriviste

startled by his sudden arrival
into an alterity

she changes from relaxed and bored to startled and sweary
her Billingsgate mutterings

her foul language
inform the beast, sub rosa,

tells the cat confidentially
that there are no styptic qualities
among the paper's many others
that she can't actually use the newspaper as a plaster

He flees to display
a temporary interest in philately
tearing through her mail
as she reapplies herself

The cat runs away and plays with her mail while she returns to the crossword

Finally dissuaded from the chthonic ratiocination

She gives up on the hellish logic of the puzzle
by a fey understanding of her inevitable failure

she knows she won't get it anyway
with no oriflamme to uphold her

with no moral support
she flips instead through the briefer articles:
the corrigendum for the previous day

instead she reads short pieces in the paper including the corrections
various ekphrasis

and a few short pieces on art

amused by a malapropism
amused by a badly phrased sentence in a piece

committed by an Apparatchik of the cubist movement

that a devotee of the cubist movement has written
missed by the editorial camarilla
missed by the editor (camarilla is secret and powerful team, not strictly true, but it's a poem ;) )

The cat has tired of the nudnik woolgathering

the cat thinks the woman is being boring
disregarding the veridical hypocorism it generates

ignoring the names she calls it
he attacks the pen she clings to
as a colporteur would his bible and

he jumps for the pen she's still hanging onto in the hopes that the crossword answers will magically appear
when it lands beneath her
attempts to dig it out
with vermicular burrowing beneath her forcing her to stand

When the pen rolls under her, the cat wriggles like a worm to get at it, forcing her to stand upright and cease being apathetic
"Tu quoque?"

“You're a cat. How can you possibly think I'm being too lazy?”

It is January 2nd