THE SAME RIVER, DEEPER

This river this time is too deep to cross

The boatman too is not to be seen

The currents  are stronger against my toe

In it flows many rivers

Hiding their heads in shrouds of sorrow

And I am one

And I don’t know how to row

And how to swim

And it starts somewhere behind my eye

And I know that many clear heads have conspired

Against the flow

I stand at the shore and watch it flow

Glowing and glistening as rivers do

The water is bad from the bad breath

Of uncultivated fields

And the mixing is never complete

And at the other shore

There is more grief

And so also on this

The fronds that talk to the river

Sigh in disbelief

This too was for naught

The flow of many years

The blooming of the absent flower

The floating carcass turns the bend

With it the flies and little fishes

And the flows that may have scalded it

Also are no more to be seen

The flow of the deep flaws in life

Has no ebb

And the tide is in

Should I cross the river?

The river is deeper

And I don’t know how to swim

The wood pecker has carved a hole

In its heart

And the river flows on

With a gorged out eye

The sparrows from their nest

No more see the cross

Or the crosser, and are all too cross

Why then the same river

And why then so many times?

The water is bitter

And the heart too weak to pump

The veins are too full

And arteries empty

And the passage is blocked

Because the time has passed

The boat has disappeared

And the carcass

Bloated and too full of rotten time

Will it reach some shore

And do it have someone

To go back to?

Or some place?

Or even a memory

That doesn’t scald?

The sky is a deep deep blue

And a seagull or green bee-eater

May still have been there

The ants are rising up with wings

For the bird of waiting death to cease.

And the carcass

Is it the boat that I was waiting for?

Does it have a third bank, this stream-

Or a fourth

Or is it a flow

In a flawless ocean

Without a shore?

I set out

On this journey

That never begins or ends

Though it is not clear

Whether it is noon or dusk.