Old men sit on this bench
figuring out the weather, leaning against
an even older, dark gable. Hidden
in the shade, I too have left behind
the light of the dunes. The eyes painting
in blind colours that place where joy was
undone, a story of mislaid waters at the heart
of the earth. The end of one’s love is like a dream.
Still now the cigarette smoke tastes
better when the morning breathes
after serene sleep. In its funnel radiant filings
show how one falls into the black limbo of the horizon,
into the thickness of the river after dusk.
Yes, I knew too late what I could have said
about my life, my mouth locked in chains
and rags, I was plainly dead.
Like the old men still sitting on this bench
I wake up in time to buy some bread
and wipe your face from my past, a shattered promise,
a grain of youth which guides me like a faint light
only kept in the wind of these words.