You

When this man too left
crouched like a monkey
in the indignity of death
and carried away to be eternized,
you resurfaced as usual
not because the bells of death
which had once put you to sleep
has now chimed life into your remains
but because with this man’s flesh too
I had once moulded the scar on your right elbow,
with this man’s hair too
I had once painted your pubescent moustache,
and from this man’s loins too
I had conjured up Zarathustras,
your sons and grandsons,
worthy of wars, horses and women.

Cranes

When I come to that mood called life
from the squeaky pathetic robot that I am turned into
I pity myself for not touching your fingers
when they were still resting on the handrails,
before they flew away as cranes into the crimson evening.

I could have crouched behind the blackened iron rails
and watch you fly to the Americas
but I was weak enough to turn my eyes
into two pieces of little lenses.

With those magnifying glasses I wandered gathering insects
and in my nights I dissected them to see their entrails
and in my days I fixed them with pins in glass cases
and my hands which were so close to yours once
are now nothing but steely forceps of sickening smells.