There where you were

I choose your voice that calmed me
that I still hear
makes me smile with my sad mouth
because I’ve lost you so long ago

I choose the wrinkles around my eyes
to make me realize I’m getting older

I read on the lines of my hands
that there will be sweet thorn blossoms
falling on my grave every year
because I’m tired

I’ve been reading about something
but now it’s gone

I prefer to remember your words to me
because I miss you
you’ve been gone for too long

now I only have myself
and I give in abundance
for you

because you wrote
how you missed me

and I will write
and bring you my art in words

I can’t believe
how lovely my voice is now
I can only think
how much you would have liked it

I can’t believe
what is flowing out of me
I hope
even though you’ve been gone for so long
that you know that

my voice with the sounds of ducks
and dove babies in a tree

children’s voices humming and playing
with mud with feathers
paper-boats balloons

my voice
with sounds of wet avant-garde Paris rainy streets
and absinthe puddles in smoky glasses
on old tables of the Belle Époque in belle Montmartre

where you were and are and your eyes
absinthe seaweed moss

a water nymph’s ripple
between water flower stems

a big ship like a star
on a night blue ocean
rocking rolling rocking

far away from the bay

quietly she wrote
lonely by the lamplight in a cabin
she smelled the cold, salty sea wind

then I’m hearing
with the sounds of daybreak
and the calls of the rainbird

trains
maybe
that will take me away

I’m waiting for the last train
to take me away

paralysed
in fear

drowned
in sorrow

in loss
it’s over

but the moon and stars will show me the way
across the mountains through the woods
my love will flow through me
because I’m coming home
to you

with my bunch of autumn leaves
purple flowers and foliage branches
that I will place by your grave

with only my thoughts about you
with only the sigh of the soft grass

I won’t desire anything
because there I’ll find rest

and I will wait
that my love folds around you
there near you

when a man from Lesotho
sends out his song across the hills

I’ll fold my blanket tighter around myself
I’ll shudder with the mist rolling across the hills

and go back to our mountain hut
our books, a piano, pots on the fire
steaming with potatoes, meat and corn beer

I will talk and read to a grandchild
while I open my book 

I'll put her on my lap
while I rest in my rocking chair

and you will sleep deeply
and know that I said

loveling, I wrote it out
that I'm in sorrow 

about everything

and I'm sorry

I now write it off

my enthusiasm has diminished

my journey had now ended
but tomorrow with the sunrise across mountains and dales
I'll still remember how we danced

in the halls of our hearts