You were a poem on page sixty five,
I was a poem on page eighty seven,
Many pages between us, and many poems,
Thousands.
An invisible hand rearranging them daily, the pages, the poems on pages...
I knew your verses by heart,
Partly rhyming,
Partly not rhyming,
Partly changing constantly,
Adding lines, removing words, shuffling colors,
A pulsating chameleon,
A living kaleidoscope, a million colors rainbow,
In red, in blue, in soft, in gentle, in warm, in nightingale tunes...
I tried to listen to them,
When the book was lying down and your page was above mine,
The light penetrating the brittle paper,
Reflecting your letters on my page,
Mixing shapes, words, adding meaning, adding mystery,
Changing love to lover, arm to warm,
Changing pain to passion...
Did you know you are doing that,
Or was it the fortunate hand of the hazards god that composed the music?
I tried to paint my lines on your page,
When the book was turned the other way around,
Creating shadows, forests, lakes of words,
Undulating with the light beams enslaved by the fluttering window curtains,
Silvery fishes jumping out of rivers,
Golden leaves shivering under the spell of haunting siren voices...
Trying to smile at you,
And at times thinking I can...
And when, at times, the book was sitting upright,
Light drilling through its covers side to side,
Dust speckles breaking the sharp rays into myriad scattered reflections,
I had the impression that you... see me,
You try to read me, try to reach through to me,
Hitting with small punctuation fists the wide desert pages between us,
Trying to tear a hole through them,
To get your first line to touch my first word,
Your title to kiss my poet's name,
Your every verse to squeeze in between my every other verse,
Creating a masterpiece, a new poem, a melody welding two lives...
Creating a new life...
*
Fell asleep, my forehead crushing piles of books strewn on my desk,
Snoring slightly between novels, from modern to picaresque,
Just returned from three days travel in this land, what was its name?
In my bag a crumbling treasure with a verse so picturesque.
Funny when that little fellow with an out of fashion beard,
In that dusty little bookshop with a smell so oddly weird,
Pulled me in, almost imploring for a favor... funny game,
That this tome away I carry, as if hell was that he feared...
Climbed aboard the train, my fingers burning with the itch of quest,
As the iron monster grumbling swallowed miles while chasing west,
I unpacked the heavy bundle with a certain strain of heart,
Partly weary, partly laughing all my worries back to rest.
Didn't feel, when did they fly by seconds, minutes, hours, miles?
While my eyes their path were searching in between the pages aisles,
Didn't I?... about this poem?... where?... what page was?... where's the start?
And confused I kept on mumbling through my neighbors' hidden smiles.
Was it just my sleepless hours hazing gaze to slumber come,
Moments suddenly I shivered with my eyes a frozen glum,
Words before my eyes were rushing, pages sliding like through spell,
Then my head the cobwebs shaking, knowing that I looked so dumb...
Dozing, shaking, reading, moaning, three more miles and here I'm home,
Dizzily I climbed the ladder to my desk under the dome,
All the while a rumbling tremor, like a mute and tongueless bell
Seemed to pass cover to cover streaming through the giant tome.
Numb with weariness and wonder, to the desk I pulled my chair,
And my pipe with frozen fingers lighted puffing in the flare,
Now, I told myself in anger, let's get down to mother earth,
Let the daylight see the marvels melt away in thinnest air.
Just an hour, then the sunshine dissipating will the haze,
And it's time I set my bearings getting out of all this craze,
Just some seconds, with my eyes closed I will smile with real mirth
And I'll break the logic binding this most genial a maze...
*
Light, it was always candle light.
Or gas light, or fluttering oil lamp light.
Never seen a stronger light, never knew there can be a stronger light.
It is dark, I know my verses but can't read yours,
Did they change meantime,
Did you lose your way in the darkness and your words mixed up,
Unrecognizable?...
No, please, no, your words so enchanting,
Your voice penetrating through the wilderness of the separating pages,
Were you calling out for me moments ago,
Was this vibration your way of telling me that one day our verses will mix for real,
That the many thousands of pages separating us will one day be torn away,
And our lines will meet, and our exclamation marks will touch,
And your rhyme will complement mine and the music will be complete,
In the voices of those reading us,
In the eyes of those regarding us, dreaming along our lines?...
Look, look sweet poem many many pages away,
I see a light, getting stronger, oh, never seen such a light before,
Now I can see you so clearly,
Your lines so rhythmic, so fluid,
Your shape so transparent and gentle...
Do you see the whirling clouds surrounding our book?
Do you see my lines?
Do you see my words transparent fingers reaching to you,
Do you see the desert, the maybe, the never, the sometime?
Here, I found it, for the first time I found it,
It was written in me and never knew where to look for it,
Now I found it under this blinding light,
Look, I found it,
The magic word... the key to the riddle... fire...
Let my desire
Sweep me like fire,
Let your sweet wonder
Smite me like thunder,
Let rhyming spell
Burn me like hell...
*
Fell asleep, my forehead crushing piles of books strewn on my desk,
Snoring slightly between novels, from modern to picaresque,
Just returned from three days travel in this land, what was its name?
In my bag a crumbling treasure with a verse so picturesque.
Was I dreaming? Did my slumber open up some mystic link,
Did I hear low thunder roaring through the waves of printed ink,
Was I still hallucinating, fever laying chesty claim
To last shreds of failing logic on my madness' very brink?
Suddenly, I jumped in horror, sleepy webs forever gone,
Light was pouring in the small room from a proud and mighty dawn,
White thin smoke still rising softly where my pipe has fallen down,
And some charred and blackened fragments seemed to flicker off and on...
Felt like crying, mighty heaven, now I'll never know nor find
Was it magic, was it madness, was it sparks inside my mind,
And I wondered, heart a thunder, on my face an angry frown,
Sixty five and eighty seven, how in hell they got entwined?...
