THE POET AND IMAGINATION

I am going!... I am leaving you, world!
How horrible this admission echoes
in the company of solitude.
And while the northern wind, like an invisible carpenter,
peels the bark off the old wooden cross,
an old homeless man, with his trembling hand,
leaves a red rose at a nameless grave,
my future home.
And while hyppocrites pretend to be compassionate,
I know that they won't shed a tear for me.
There are wonderful people who can shed their tears,
but they won't know where my grave is.
The old homeless man stares at the grave,
wondering whether death might come for him
before the black soil covers the body
of his brother in poverty.
It is sad to end up in a nameless grave,
but the world doesn't care too much about sadness.
Perhaps a priest might come to the funeral by chance,
but not to hold a farewell speech,
no, rather to see if the nameless grave
takes up too much space,
and maybe a flower shall rise from the black soil tomorrow,
like a beautiful bride to the soul of the dead poet.
The time to leave is approaching... my tired body
is waiting for the blistered hands of the grave diggers
to be lowered into the nameless grave.
Oh, Lord, give me time enough
just to fill this white paper,
my sad testament to the cold world.
Above me, a turquoise butterfly is wistfully flapping its wings,
as if it came to his poet's funeral.
It is so young and beautiful,
as if it arose from my poem back when I believed in the world.
There is nothing left for me apar from my imagination.
Yes, world, me and my imagination used to knock
on your thick door for days, months and years,
but you would always send us away like tramps.
I wanted to ransom your sin with my poems,
but you always crumple them and threw them into the bin.
You threw away your children... your conscience!...
It is time to leave!
You know, Lord, that I'm not one of those who give up
at the halfway point.
Now I am standing in the same place
where I took off into the world, followed by childish dreams,
and the reverberating echo of my mother's wishes,
I am going, leaving behind imagination
which is feverishly clinging on to me...
I know it would like to go with its poet,
but there is no space for it down in the black soil.
Wise men say that the imagination
is the mother and father to every poet,
but I am just leaving...
leaving for a world without imagination.
I am taking all my life's legacy with me,
a stack of white paper, a dry pen,
and ink as hard as flintstone,
because I haven't immersed my pen in it in ages,
but what good is any of this without imagination?
Where I am heading, there is no place for imagination,
my faithful squire, is there?
Death is silently standing in its black cloak,
everything on it is black apart from... apart from...
Oh, Lord, can it be that death is crying...?
Never in my life did I see such a big pearly tear,
slowly sliding, silvering all the darkness surrounding death,
and in death,
how strange it is for death to cry because I'm leaving,
and the world... living people... they don't even turn to see.
There is no fear in me, only sadness,
not because I am leaving this cold world,
but because I am leaving my imagination,
and it needs me so much,
because there are so many sheets of white paper left unfilled.
I am leaving!... Do not worry, my imagination!...
Just wait for me in the same spot!...
From our poems, a new soul shall arise
and enter a new mother's womb
to bring a poet into this world
who will be luckier than I was.

©Walter William Safar