Читать книгу Love's Last Number - Christopher Howell - Страница 9

A SHORT SONG

This is a song of our consciousness, that faltering

old man who will never make it across the bridge,

who sits down in the grit and dust of it with his wrinkled sack

of groceries that will have to last. A song of his foolish bravery

and terror, his hope that will not stay focused, that wanders

a springtime path between peach trees

and the berries, humming something, forgetting,

and humming again. A song of his wishes

tossing their hats in the wind and watching the last boat

depart, its cargo of nameless meaning casting flowers, waving

out of sight as the sun goes down.

It is a song of memory’s little ways and sudden corner-like loveliness

turned to smoke and broken glass it eats and eats

to stay marginally alive. A song of the bridge that never ends

really, and never whispers this

as the old man listens for the one spot of silence

or the one clear voice that might be his.