The Railway
There used to be a railway line in our home,
but our house was made of stone and steel.
We used to hide from trains right to the windows
and look over the smoke wreathed hills,
every ten hours,
from Monday to Saturday.
On Sunday evenings you were hosting modest gatherings,
with all the passengers from the platform.
At first, they were awaiting too,
outside our house, for someone long forgotten.
But you never had the heart to let them still for so long.
One by one, you were carrying them inside with great devotion,
placing their bodies on chairs, arraying them,
just like you arrayed that railway in our home,
like you arrayed us
– you split everything in half.
That night, you sat down at our table, speeding like vertigo.
You were holding a stained cup of tea,
and your hands were trembling.
Your face seemed like a Chinese ivory carving:
fragile, scratched.
For the first time, you looked suspicious at our guests,
like you just had an epiphany.
“God bless you!” – I said to you as the cup was breaking.
Breaking, unbreaking, then breaking again
in a perpetuum mobile.
But the cup did not break from their poison
and nor did you.
As the night has passed,
you both had shattered from the same familiar vibrations.
It was already Monday
Ring all the bells
Reminiscing an archaic liturgical celebration,
the missionaries had laughed and rung the bells
seventy times that day.
Not for the years that had passed,
but for the ones they’ll get to live
within your absence.
Back then, some still believed the bells could ring themselves,
making of this, above it all,
only an empty superstition.
You took your coffee black
and sprinkled with a grain of salt,
to ease the sleepless nights.
You loathed the old countryside
with the same strength you loathed
the mighty industrial towns
– like there was no in between,
and nothing but a pervert filthiness
unending.
“Everything’s immortal!” – you used to scream your lungs out
and spit their mocking faces,
while yours was going red
– every time.
Your fights were nothing but a Pyrrhic victory,
your taste was bitter, your pain in vain.
You were found down to the sea a year later,
and left there for sixty-nine more.
– in their eyes, the unhinged never deserves
a funeral.
“Here lies the drunken sailor man unburied”
– that’s what was written just above your head,
where the sea still meets your graceful bones
religiously.
You never had to feel the land.
Over one hundred forty years of existence
on this Earth,
and rumor has it that you leave the lights on
every night and morning,
when you depart
to wander aimlessly throughout the waters.