The World Will Always Be Here

Days Spent Walking Once

Voices, throwing the moments out of their lives,saying things before I heard them,profoundly human. As I arriveat the railway yard with my seven-year-old sonwe see the sliced head like a hairywatermelon trembling between the rails.No one in the crowdhad brought in the name of a godwho must be answerable to them yet.

Just one spring morning when the lightwas urging us to leap into the horizon,both of us saw the headless bodygrowing into uncertainty some distance away,like the old bridgedown the middle of the river,one maybe he had left years ago,the tower he had built once as high as he could,with his reason winding round and roundto the top in an endless stairway.We didn't talk; every common wordcarried too much terrible weight to be spoken,so the light gathered on the shoreof the silent city that naked grief owned.Voices kept on revealing his life storyas a dog leaned forward to lick its sores.

We stood and watched, our lives suddenlycarrying another life, our living a turbid poolwe could dip from but could not,with no light to search world's ends for. I couldn't stand there anymoreas a breath of cold shook the light in his face,as the spilt blood pointed to a fictitious heroismmaking one more alone than one has ever been.Just one death there, the same worldstumbling over our feet, the growing convictionthat all deaths are Sundays,their endless fierce fightpulling the new life out of darkness,dead words breathing,but always lonelier than the dead.

Dialogue

The hands that hold this worldhave fingers that deep, dyingfor uncertain mysteries. Leprous mutilations.I wish I could break the quietof my brother standing near me.One is not in fear of Dostoevsky's just darknessthat grows between his words.Or, for that matter, Pasternak's.I would relax safely in a soft armchairand watch the show right through to the end,crossing bridges of hunger and desire,through the iron hearts of storm and shadow,closing all eyes. The road is waiting,with the tact and order I needto protect me from being a murderer.Deaths lie in my bed in the darkened room.They come with bloodied thumb-markson their throats from children's homes,from women who take rootlike trees in silent fear,even from the kindest of hearts.The hands that hold this worldburst out of their slow evil years. The road does not end here,Nor our little misery. Our most heroic deed.And the terrible army of our hopes.

A Still Winter Morning

A still winter morning, and a sullen mistplaying with the pallor between its fingers.The only door to an exhausted village hutopens noiselessly like a tongue hung out.

Just the shadow of a womancomes and goesthrough it into the little vacant yard.In the corner the scanty harvested paddyis wet with dew.

Guavas glow green everywherewith adolescence.From far down her body,grief, death, and widowhood,peer at her old father,standing like a lost sheep huddledaway from death.

The odor of rats sticks to the sagging floor.Hunger looks from the middle of a breath.Once again, it has nowhere to go.On this still winter morning.What light there was has not entered her eyes.Just a woman's shadow up against a wallof that home of hers so inviolateit has never opened inside her.