Eternal youth

The infant opened his eyes and asked the sky:
who are you mother?
tell me if I am like you.
The sky kept silent and the child started to cry.
turn your face to the woods, my child.
do you see that tree struck by lightning?
How could he keep inside himself the fire and the light?
How many years did it take until he fell broken in two?
how much love, how much beauty, how much truth, how much sorrow?

The child began to cry louder.
Mother, I miss you, tell me where I can find you.
Shut up, my child.
Look over the chimney, what do you see?
The child saw the whitish trail of smoke rising slowly in the air.
At the end of that frolic twist of smoke, there were three stars.
Then two. Then one.
The child covered his eyes and ran inside the house.

Old and frail, the child looks towards the three stars once more
and smiles: and you, my son, you too are like me.

Between today and tomorrow

the motherless child has pointed ears as if a hare and he runs
on the witchgrass and chicory field within the rifle’s range
the child
draws his blanket every evening up under his chin
the blanket with holes like stars
he covers the cold in his body
a cold so frail and shameful
he keeps silent when others talk he murmurs hail mary
when others believe that he’s cursing
until there comes the rain until valleys get deeper where streamlets run
him the one who lives hiding behind a woman’s icon
he steals the wild blackberries from the graveyard of the innocents

one missing in a thousand years

unborn baby
I yearned for you in my empty belly
like someone hiding his tears in a pillow
I blended the bitter yeast of life with tender wheat sap
to make you grow proud and strong
to be born in a cypress shade

my child
I swayed you on my arms like a rising sun
ending with burnt shoulders in a ragged cloth
I slept with my temple over flint stones
sipped water from summer tempests
fed on wild blackberry
in order to raise you

I baptized you with an old name
in the spring water under a cross
I wiped your front with untouched grasses
bringing you up to the sky on my palms
and cleansed back to my chest

my son
I promise you that you shall have the fast horse fed on embers
that the red and the green kings shall make peace
that forests shall grow bigger and golden fields taller
as far as you’ll remember me
under your feet

Teardrops

sunlight twinkles through the window
on pink and white hyacinths
she reads a fairy tale
colors tremble in the book

are butterflies going asleep mom
the child repeats looking aside
it doesn’t matter she answers quickly
too spoiled she thinks
he will forget until tomorrow
I want to know if butterflies die mom
she keeps silent crumpling the question
in her apron pocket
smelling like cinnamon and lemon

wind thrown leaves fill the balcony
yellow rusty brown
the child opens his hazy eyes
why butterflies never cry mom

Seasons

„And mom, stones were changing
into butterflies, learning how to fly.”
The child was smiling,
tears gathering in beehives
became only dewdrops.

This time I was walking along
like a shadow,
counting leaves into rivers,
returning whispers to silence,
haunted by brown and dry colors,
with my eyes moist like tender stars rising
in the summer evenings,
with my heartbeat unleashing
the cold springs waterfalls
from bygone days.