April 25, 2019

• still life

  

   

  my heart is weak, but still beats
  day and night, still a kind of life
  of anticipation

  the rainy season seems to be ending
  it's a good time for dreaming
  (modern literature doesn't do much dreaming
  but in classical love stories, it is still life)

  i want to advise you to travel, to see seagulls fly,
  to stay overnight in an unknown place.
  tomorrow i am going to do that,
  i am going to stay overnight
  in your heart

  you may sit by the window, sometimes
  rueful as the day darkens.
  (you wanted to make a few vows
  in cherry blossom season
  that weren't yours to make...

  and before you could open your mouth,
  love had tidied its hair and left)
  "anyway, it's all useless" you thought
  "i am living," you said, "though i don't know
  what for, this is still life..."

  this poem is a drawing for you.  a bowl of fruit,
  a table in a humble country home,
  nothing really above you or better than you,
  just an ordinary woman who loves you
  who is slightly disembodied in this medium

  and if you ever get lost, please remember
  the picture that i drew of a stone lantern
  it will light your way to a grave on a hillside
  without a marker, but you'll know
  that it's still me, it's still life

  • 6:01 am
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