Epitaph Written on the Gravestone of an Apostate

Are those really your eyes peering
At me through the shadows?
I don’t recall having seen you.
All faces look the same. All origins the same.

Of course, I remember having heard a voice
In my hours of waking and dreaming;
They punctuate my soul with dictums
Unnerving.

Lizards alone have understood
The puzzles of your coming and going.
I see them fall prostrate on the ground at dusk,
I see them die, unburied, joining
The universe of brown moss, dried grass.

But you, you had seen me from afar;
Am the image of a new sailboat,
Proud, ready to prick the winds,
Daring to rush to the cliffs of the unknown.

I too used to join the flutter of wings,
Of bats that enjoyed the frolics of the dark;
I spluttered the hysterics of every new day:
That you knew.
And because you had dictated the ways I should tread,
I would hang on the balance.
Am here: Ready to fall.

A leaf, now dried, now browned by sixty summers:
I lay on the grass. No candles lit. No prayers said—
This is the moment when all rites
Could be wrong.

July 10, 2006, 8:55 p.m.
Rev. August 27, 2007, 08:31 a.m