MIRAGE
So whole, straightforward, the cry of the gull
when it disturbs the dawn but soon blends
with the sky's rustling hues.
Or the rhythmical panting of the dog
staring at you, waves of elation
barely contained in the air they exude.
Or even the same guitar chords
you have been listening to for years
undiminished by the scratches on the old record,
that keep stripping and thrashing about
to this very day, the strings of the horizon's throat.
Sounds, harmonies flown into words,
the black Baptist preacher in his river of gold notes,
speech thundering with no effort into song.
Assonances that come from afar, that brush you
when you speak in your somnolent routines
along the draughts of grey corridors,
they clang in between your syllables
and you blush inside, burn really,
aware you are borrowing a horizon.
The immediate gorge in the monk's voice
when before his last breath he roared like a lion
or your old dog that in the same moment
moaned like a huge star gazing at you,
or the poet managing to pronounce "that's enough"
among his ruins, still sounding sober.
But you have instead
only wavered into language,
impulses lost in the crumbs of the moment,
and all the bastion-words you love ache now
with the quivering stare of a mirage
