Stepping Aside
In broken promises
in the company of strangers
in a new city
in a dark room
in a church
in a secret side lane outside a friend's apartment
I have heard sometimes the whisper of a name
that hangs delicate like spiders webs across sun-filled garden
passes
undisturbed by the walking noisy multitudes
What would I bring you along these paths?
What good would I do treading down these avenues?
But only to disturb an ancient silence, a new peace
a heavenly truce that ties sky to earth?
What could I bring you friend that would justify my
tearing the web
breaking the fast
loosing the ties that keep
time good between the hours of waking and sleeping ?
Is there any reason for my being so blatant and bold and
mercenary?
Who would hear my confession then?
For the murder of the quiet, the rape of the silences
The publication of the everlasting secrets?
Who would absolve me friend as I trod these paths bringing it
to you?
Seeing this
Smelling this
I stepped aside and found another place
other than
in the company of strangers
in a dark room
in a new city
in secret side lanes outside your apartment
I walked back upon my steps
and found a life
still and breathing barely
air like the lotus leaf trembling on the surface of a tropic
pond
Walking backwards I stumbled on a string of lace winged nymphs
strewing their star dust across the meridians of the old ones
and it smelled of yet another rape
yet another outrage
Oh how I live !
and
I live perilously
stepping on a place
of broken promises
of one to another
and if not that then to another
one people tricking another
people
I step and tread unknowing into my own doom
I give thanks to God for he has always seen fit to open me to
the hurt
and then to shield me from the spirits, haunting and darkened
and roaming like hungry ghosts - for they are
and to let me walk in the interstices
between this and that
for this is the secret, is it not?
Knowing when to stop
Knowing when to pause
Knowing how to listen out for the name…..
as it floats across the path, across the traveler's face
mistaken for the wind
Sometimes
when you least expect it, it enters in by the left ear
and you hear it, you remember it
you know it from before…..
in the secret places
