We should leave ancestral homes
where we learned to walk.
And I could see myself in the past
as a ghost.
Last day, I saw myself doing homework
from my school days.
Before that, one week back,
I saw myself at the dining table
with a wound from a kitchen knife.
The shadows of the past
follow as ghosts in ancestral homes,
so we have to leave them.
It is hard to distinguish shadows from reality,
and painful too.
Skulls—
broken and scattered,
fragments of bone,
the shattered wheels of chariots.
Yes,
we must dig here
for the springs
of blood.
What remains here now
to be read
are the hieroglyphs
someone once carved—
shapes we recognize,
meanings we do not.
Like a rabbit
leaning out
from a silver cloud.
Neither a heart
nor the sky
holds moisture
in this barrenness.
Yet they wait to sprout,
wait with ears turned to rain.
The seeds
belong to flowering plants—
and someone,
somewhere,
must be waiting
for those flowers too,
silent,
beyond the ages.
Still deeper—
toward the hidden springs
The rosebush,
wounded by thorns,
bled a color
as deep red
as rose petals.
If time and tide
search
my heart,
they will find
footprints
that no wave
can erase—
they are yours.
Your eyes
are stars.
When the heart
grows heavy
with darkness,
they shine brighter
in the sky
of memory.
Your memories
are the wine
in my stone jar—
a wine that grows
stronger
as it ages.
I will keep
filling my cup
with it,
until the day
the jar itself
shatters.
The shrubs
with unknown
yellow blossoms
that bloomed
in the month of mist
might be
the summer season’s
rebirth
of yellow flowers—
like memories
of love.
And like those
who parted
hoping to meet again,
a few butterflies
circle around
those yellow blooms.
In a crowd
of strangers,
everyone is lonely—
all who cannot recognize
each other
remain unfamiliar.
Yellow flowers and butterflies,
between them
the wind,
the passing time,
and yet another da
