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110
II.
The shadows of the past century are whizzing by.
The shifting faces of missing fathers,
mothers in aprons all alone
with their hands in happiness forever in stone,
children growing from the pavement.
Mothers vanished into the whirlings of their own hands,
fathers with their musical ears to the hearth,
and children who are swimming, swimming far away.
Anyone who ever attempted to catch time like butterflies
felt metal shards of failure on the tongue.
Our hands are not up to it.
Oh awkward lamb, why are you lost?
The sun in your voice is dead.
I need to steadily set my foor towards what used to be,
the door is narrow and shuts trickily.
I never know on which side I have landed,
the door is looking at me with its glassy stare.
Just now, love was a gill through which
I breathed, barely, and yet I see in the water
only an empty bubble rising.