WHAT WAS ALIVE


My father's ghost dissolves
into a green morning and bloody evening,
the playfulness of childhood
interlaced with a bent forefinger.

You never asked me about the past,
the forgotten land of my own body.
Though the figure is still close,
the boy's face is mute and blurred.

How seldom a stranger enters.
It was someone else I was calling
who walks away in twilight
without reaching the beginning or end.

The air of the village is undisturbed
where no one has travelled for years,
where exile has taken hold of me
and an unfamiliar language.