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On your birthday

On your birthday, I thought of you.

I walked home round 3 am through some darkened alleys, which once were streets.
Now they’re hidden behind some ugly blocks.
I felt spring was in the air and I smelled the river,
as I walked beside its black water skirting the old town.
The streets were seething with Friday night fever.

I passed that huge line of cabs we’d never notice in our endless talks
on the way to my place, on nights like this one.

I’ve missed you so much since you’re gone.

On your birthday, I filled the house with white flowers.

But then I saw the mistletoe you hung over the doorframe.
I remembered your hands, as they were tying it there.
Your voice. Your skin.

You disappeared, as if I menaced your mere bones.

You walk on different streets now, under a different sky.
You carry this shadow around you, selling it off as freedom.
Deep inside you, you know. It’s slow of sale.

Yours must be a sad life.

Otherwise you’d have never come near me, in the first place.

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On taming wild beasts

When I was small, people would ask: ‘What do you want to be, when you grow up?’

There were always several answers in may head, so I’d need a moment to answer.
‘Storm!’ or ‘a millionaire’, I’d say sometimes.

Often I thought I’d like to be a tamer of wild beasts. To understand the languages of many and be able to handle their different ways. I’d be able to talk to owls and falcons, lizards and foxes, tigers and buffaloes…

Time passed by – and I became something else.
I do not want to tame beasts any more, I’d rather prefer to be like one.

A tiger, largely solitary, strong, unimpressed by ants or humans and their small struggle.
Minding his own business. Equally at ease on the ground, as in water.
Sharing food and territory amicably, whenever the case.
Just being.

‘You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.’ Mary Oliver, Wild Geese