Tell me what you would have me buy.
Is it meat? Is it bread?
Where is the valley I can go for these things?
Will you lead me?
Will the wolves not break my skin
With their stained teeth?
What is this cloud above my head
And why did you put it there?For a long time I have been listening
To the song of the sparrow.
For a long time it has been dying.
It does not feed me anymore.I am hungry.
I have no teeth with which to eat.
Once I was full of my own accomplishment.
Where has it gone?The valley has emeralds.
It has minks and pearls.
It has star-studded walkways
And a giant in its midst.
It has fish from the seven seas
Consumed by those
Who eat by themselves in cafés.Somewhere it has my mother,
Starved and penitent.
In the quiet does she talk to God
And tell him of her pain.
Concern shows on his face
And his hand is busy
With the notes he must take.
About me she tells him,
The things I have done and left undone.“My son is a good boy. He is not
Always right in his head.
He thinks the animals are following him
When they have problems of their own.
He has killed his father
And wanders the earth alone.
He wants to lie down
But endlessly walks his shadowed path.”I am here at the water’s edge.
I am waiting for a ship.
It flies its own flag, that of oblivion,
Somewhere over the horizon.
I am waiting for a bird.
It has disappeared.I am waiting for a child
Who has lost his mother.
He is somewhere in the forest,
Where beasts sup on his flesh.
I am waiting for the ocean
To tell me what it knows.February 2004