I wish to meet the man who laid
the bricks of this still-standing shed:
worms have feasted on ancient bones,
his calloused hands destroyed, yet, his creation
remains, standing, still.
The floorboards would creak,
if there was someone to stand on them;
they say here the breeze is an
old phantom’s call but I’ve never been
superstitious.
Alone in a woods which had reclaimed this land—
dams raised and burrows dug by animals
that did not live to love or war. Violence left only a ruined
land for trees to liberate. All the land
ruined before a still shed, ever-standing.
I imagine it was once a rendezvous for two, soon spooked
at the wails of the wind; the very same rang on these grounds
when man took up arms against man,
signing treaties on a table upon which an old woman once placed
her still-steaming crumble.
I know not the names of the dead here.
Nonetheless, I cry to their ancient breeze, begging for answers
about a past I never knew and a future I cannot know;
why may a shed stand longer than me?
These cries join only the graveyard’s chorus.
Bình luận