A Conversation at the end of the day
Oh I have tried so many times
to see the sunlight in your eyes
but it’s impossible to me
to dream up things I cannot see,
the ones I do not want to touch
stay right behind me holding grudges,
dodging bullets to their heads
and healing slowly with God’s help;
though he has turned away his head
from my unsolved and shriveled health,
from both my hands he once has held,
from all my dreams he has not felt;
his heavy heart has fallen down
it lies beside his golden crown
and flies and bees all gathered up
upon it, on his feeling sup.
I ask of him: “Give me the word!
What do if I still stay unheard?
What if I cannot bare to lift
the things that others to me gift?
What if my heart no faster beats
when I see where my living leads?
What do I do when I don’t know
what to expect from my own show?”
He smiles with saddened, sunken eyes
and sings me broken lullabies.
With no such tune I’ve ever heard,
with no translation to his words;
I sit right by him to his side
and sing the melody he tries
to just uphold in both his arms,
with all his fallen kingdom’s dust,
to raise an eyebrow lest they hear
his cries at night. With no man’s fear
he screams for help, right when the night
her fingers ‘round him claws so tight
and hisses words into his ear
that no man else would dare to hear.
He hears us whisper in our beds:
our pleas for guidance, pleas for help,
but cannot raise a finger, for
time played her game with him so sure:
He, now, is old and so fatigued
and lived for years in the mystique
that he, allmighty, can do all
when in reality he falls.
The throne, the crown, the kingdom: dust…
And still we think that’s not enough…
What he — the leader, helped us build!
What hunger, thirst he once has stilled!
and now the time has come that he
retire….
but we refuse to see.
The tiresome rebirth of day
reminds him of his own decay:
that sunlight flares upon his wreck
— all that he had, but can’t have back.
His lullaby then drifts aside
there’s no more secrets he can hide.
The battle — over
He — so old
His hands again so pale and cold;
he looks directly back at me
and says:
“My child, maybe it’s not your cup of tea”
