Between two shadows

In the last years he only read one

book: his own. Other words

grew dim before his gaze. The lines

on the map, I never realized that they

were his creation, his veins, that I

was moving in the circulation of his blood. At

the funeral his colleagues from the road

and water works silently laid down

their flowers. I stood winding down the coffin that was

bound around with four ropes, and perceived

how easily I myself could roll down there.

I did not know he liked

Chopin’s funeral march until I heard

it performed by an organist who was not

worthy of him. It was then that I began

to suspect that there is perhaps only

one poem to write, the rest

tell of an implacable silence that increases in

our gullets, from where it may sometimes

stray upwards as song.

As though the light just broke

in between us, into our language

and made us visible when

we stood between two shadows.