An education

[To Wislawa Szymborska]

Under a bridge in Trzebinia
there is a wooden bench
whose planks are no longer parallel.
They lean into each other
the way sundays do into mondays,
reluctantly.

The view looks out on a silence
whose throat has long dried up.
Top left corner: a steeple clambers up the sky
desperate to escape its inhumanity.
Elsewhere, saggy electricity cables argue
like old men over newsprint.
On tired railway wagons, time frays.
Unshaken, dry heather sways
like postmen's yawns.

It was there
that you sat me down and unfurled life
as things came tumbling out,
"chairs and sorrows, scissors,
tenderness, transistors, violins,
teacups, dams and quips."
It was almost as if
good old Prometheus had
taunted the gods once again.

At night, old dreams return
like cats to spilled milk.
In the unwitnessed quiet of a windowsill,
that stolen flame still cradled
in my grateful heart,
I remember.

[4:43 am | 3rd February, 2012]