In my mother's and father's house
There were no precious paintings or work of art
And yet, abundantly, there flowed
From and through their doors with open arms
A landscape lush with living faces
Some restored, some original and untouched.
On some cheeks, there may have been
Faint traces of another street, another wind,
Some sign that they had lived some other life
But some did wear a blush, a burst of light,
The color of the sun from the windows of their heart
Yet other faces were threadbare pale,
A regal dignity in their eyes,
Some were dark with the darknesses of their griefs,
A cautious tremor on their lips
And always careful to deny their private pride.
These faces, these persons, I have seen them all
The friends, relatives, neighbors and strangers,
And other companions from my father's books.
My father, a quiet man, was so gifted with a tongue
With such strange economy of speech,
He wrote his life in books and he wrote it all down
And that is why it seemed as though
On dreamland's lanes, he strolled with us
And each story, each play, each tale he wrote
Was lesson taught and laughter shared
With his daughter and three sons,
And that it seemed as though
He talked to us an eternity and one night,
Under the heavens and the stars.
The mother and father of my mind,
Their spaces vast and empty now
Have left me full, have left me rich,
A miser, a hoarder of many memories and their loss,
There sit in folds, their lonely blankets and pillows,
Sweet apparel of their dreams, the garments of their thoughts
There too, now rest, their venerable nights and days
Paupers and beggars to their children's needs,
To the rise and the fall of their dusts and their stars.
And for us, these thousand and other things
That had taken the shape of who they were
And for love became, what they had become,
Have stirred such passion, have evoked such tears,
And will not bring them back to life.
Nor ever again will they be, the living face a son could kiss,
The sweet bend of arms to hang on to, touch, to hug,
And not ever again the warmth, the kindness, the loving
A son aches and longs to call his very own.
One night
Without music,
The white of my mother's and father's souls
Will wait in ambush
Wake the roses, and in the siege of fragrance, rise
To peel away the skins and roots of my body's laments
And from their pulp
Weave a pattern,
Make a curtain,
Which I shall gently drape
Over the windows of my children's lives
That through the fabric, they may see
The light that sings their names for joy.
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