Kostas 21Nov15

Self-Portrait

I know I promised to stop
talking about it,
but I was talking to myself.
The truth is, it’s a child
who stopped growing,
so I’ve always allowed it
to tag along, and when it brings
its melancholy close to me
I comfort it. Naturally
you’re curious; you want to know
how it became a gnarled branch
veiled in diminutive blooms.
But I’ve told you all I know.
I was sure it had secrets,
but it had no secrets.
I had to tell it mine.
(C. Twichell ; adapted)

Truth, our personal truth
and trust, our fragile truth
have both a need of surveillance.
Like the breath they follow us
in slumber, sleep and dreams
and like the breath we know them not.

Do we stop the breath, or does the breath fail us
if the truth, the trust, the sleep and the dream fail us?
It's the child in us then holds our hand and leads.
The child holds neither a belief nor any truth.
It holds no secret, no shadow of a self to precede or follow.

When the child steps ahead of me
I have to catch it and pull it behind
to walk alongside me,
 because I am all alone
without its pristine innocence,
 my primal shadow, this child