THE POEM
A word, a casual word
inspired by a farewell
has reached you, and you now
rejoice in knowing you have, after all,
been wrong in your belief
of self-sufficient happiness or grief.
You hardly can recall
his face, yet his face glows
with sudden light you love
and find most true and typical of him.
It is a word, or more,
it is a thought, or less,
that populates your earth
at once, and makes you see
somebody waiting for you on some shore,
somebody walking with you on a path
of common loneliness?
And you will never know
whether it was a sunset or a dawn,
a valley or a wave,
a mountain or a tree,
which at that moment made a man feel lonely
and wish you too were there.
You – and why you? That sight
was somehow incomplete without you – why?
Did he associate you with the light
of the sun, fading rare
and red; or with the green
rebellion of the grass;
or with the strong yet doomed
declining of a slope?
You only know that scene,
for some mysterious reason of new life
or ancient death, was yours
that moment and that day,
when, of so many men,
a man saw you alone
ready to bear with him
the tragic terror of a lonely den
or quick to share the glory of a dream.
From Ninety poems (2012)
© Baroque Press, New York
Trani, harbor. Photo Archivio Fotogramma