A poem to my late grandfather

A memory,
Captured in a bird’s throat.
A heart,
Nestled on a thorn.
A palm tree,
Drowned in a thicket of light.
To the shores of twilight,
The birds fly,
Bathing their songs in the solitude of the horizon’s
Orange belt that separates them from death.

The heart impaled on a thorn,
Like a cicada crushed between the jaws of winter,
Bleeds alone in the stillness of pain.
A god in tears,
An inflamed violet wound.
A mouth full of seashells.
A heart impaled on a thorn,
Bleeds green and sand.

Like a passing desolate breeze
Over a tormented eye,
I imagine you there leaning against a palm tree,
A water statue of memories
Your hand light as air,
Caress the shell of a cicada.

Like the palm tree you drink the
Brilliance of the world.
Still like a stare overflowing with anguish,
Elusive like a passing shadow of a sparrow’s wing.
You disappear like a mist in glass
Or perhaps you merge into the palm tree like a cry
She hides you inside its heart lest you devour all the light.

Dust?
Light?
Are you lost in a wind?
Or are you hidden inside a tree?
I do not know.

The winds never speak to me.
They never howl out your name to me.
I just feel their moans like those of an injured dolphin
Whenever they pierce my chest.

The palm tree never speaks to me about you either
I look at it growing taller by time
Enshrouded in its own pride
It has risen so high
I know that it would go up no more,
It would pierce the sky no deeper,
It would hide away the birds no farther,
I press my ear against its trunk,
Hoping for a human’s pulse,
A warmth of a human’s blood,
A sigh of a weary throat.

I search for light
A luminous breath that would trickle
Out of an aging wood.
Feeling the tree with my hands,
I look for a crack, a secret path of ants.
I find nothing.
I thrust my fingers into its outer shell,
And I hear a sound like that of a breaking vase in a void
Resonates in the pit of my stomach
In despair I cry out,
A cicada flies away wetting my forehead with its silvery warm water.

The stream of water cuts its way through the thick grass,
Gurgling muffled agonies long stored in a pit of darkness.
Blades of grass,
Burdened with solitude and sunlight sink beneath that metallic sheet,
Sparkling tresses of a dead mermaid.

O flowing water!
What secrets of my grandfather do you keep within the foliage of your mercury cells?
What do the murmurs of your condensed drops say?
What memories are locked away in the hollowness of your belly?
What is that yellow streak that winds through your breast?
Is it an orphaned sunbeam or the unspoken suffering of a drowning sailor?
What earth have you stained with your kisses?
What dust have you dissolved into dreams?

O flowing water, hot in winter like a knife,
Cold in summer like the hand of an assassin.
How many angels’ tears did it take to create you?
Speak to me of my grandfather!
How was he like?
How did you capture his reflection in your mirror?
Did you sense his strength and love when he dipped his fingers into your bowls?
Did you feel his weight when he sank his feet into your eyes?

Tell me,
What did his eyes say when he sat at your bank alone in a mist of remoteness?
What was he thinking of then?
Thinking of you Great Master of life, vein of eternity?
Or perhaps thinking of his own grandfather just like me
Or of a grandson he knew he would not see?

Did you see the faint quiver on his lips?
The shadow of an angel’s wing over his whitening beard?
Did you hear the beats of his heart?
A cacophony of rain and fire,
That tears off the silence of the moment,
And rests on your rock like
A huge infinite pause,
A shivering cold pulse,
A dried up blood drop on a cross.

O water, enemy of death, trader of grasshoppers!
You taste of flesh, feathers soaked with sweat
Everything dwells in your emptiness:
Memories of glassy reeds,
Nostalgia of cracked earth,
And poverty of silent cries

Tell me ancient water,
Did my grandfather shed a tear into your tears?
If yes, please give it back to me.

O bird in a haze of purity you migrate,
To the shores of twilight
Where God, dappled with a fine spray of waves,
Sits on a rock, a nostalgic memory flutters through his eyelashes.
O lonely god! You are huge as a mother’s touch,
An orphan’s tear,
A martyr’s wound.
You, migrating bird, perching on his shoulder,
Along with your fellow birds,
A cluster of insomnia,
A chandelier of feathery stars.
Your silhouettes cast a shadow across his neck.
A black sword of longing freezes in the middle of an empty blood vessel.

Talk to me bird, voyager of the skies,
Friend of the clouds,
Enemy of gravity.
Did my grandfather's glance wound your breast?
Did his walk shake your nest?
Did his dreams disturb the glow in your eyes?
Speak to me of the shine in your wings.
Where did you come with it from?
Is not the footprint of my grandfather’s fate?
Speak to me of the lemon’s twig in your beak.
Where did you steal it from?
Is not the twin of my grandfather’s finger?
Speak to me of the crown over your head.
Where did you dig it out from?
Is not the artery of my grandfather?
Speak to me of your stained feet.
What blood did you wallow your tiny feet in?
Give me back that drop of blood.
It’s not yours anymore.

My dear grandfather,
I might not understand death just yet,
I might not understand nature that always speaks to me about you,
I might not understand the world in which I imagine you,
I might not even understand you, forgive me if I do not.
However, I feel your presence within my soul,
Expanding like a divine breath, a prolonged murmur of the universe.
I am sad. I am sad because I lived in another time.
The minute that bore you had been stripped of a different clock.
But I will always create and re-create you in my heart,
A chalice overflowing with your memories.
These words might not reach you, but they are you!
You are the alphabet I create.
With every single word I write, a new memory of you sprouts wings in my heart.
Just imagine how many birds you have given life to on the tree of my heart?
You turned my heart into a song.

Your grandson,
4/10/09