GREENER PASTURES

I also grew up here, among these fogs,
where colors, as rules, dodge and wear away,
although redder than red is still the rage,
and the souls glow much bluer than the blue,
and so the rain falls greyer than the grey.

My father left us, my mother and me,
in one of those veiled chaste mornings,
dreaming of pastures greener than this green.
It was long ago, he must, I suppose
have already built a life of his own,

thinking he’d better not try to come over
and see us back in these valleys, so he
would not disturb the lives we’ve so far lived
in a place we still happen to call home.
True as it is, he couldn’t be more wrong.

Now it is my time to leave for a journey
in which I will fear nor hunger nor pain,
but dread all those blank nights, wishing that sleep
would come instead of a silence repeating
these barren solitudes inside my head.

And I will fear no strangers up my way,
but dread the fierce impression that no matter
how far you get, the journey will outlast you,
that you have come such a long way and yet
no sign of the greener pastures, and yet

no sign of greener pastures.


(october 2006, in a dream)