I was born on a blade of grass,
Yet before the year came to pass
I could've turned into a cricket.
I grew up to become a man –
I clean forgot how it began –
Yet I'm as thin as a bus ticket.
A cloud fathered me in Spring
While the sun was a-turning
To get a better sleeping position.
The wind raised me like her kin
Made me float across the plains
As if I were a gamin o' the halcyon.
During that summer when I was born,
Fire undid stone, wind undid metal,
Bees wrought beehives the size of
cathedrals
And bulls grew a new pair of horns.
Words broke down at the first spell of
rain,
Showering letters like smithereens –
Untold stories laid still in brackish
puddles.
Prophecies abounded in those bygone
times.
One told of the cataclysm I spoke
about.
It all happened in the wink of an eye.
The sound and the fury were unleashed,
Shaking nightshades on their stem.
Then some sort of silence prevailed.
Then everything stood still.
As if every sentient life form
Were playing statues.
Yet 'tis another one which mattered,
Which altered the very breaths I drew.
It told of my love for a poppy.
She turned out to be the prettiest
thing I had ever seen.
She once said I was the only one around
Who was actually too thin
To shade her with my string-like self.
She smiled and smiled and smiled.
Satchels of time I had aplenty
Yet she made me live without her.
She left. She left. She looked sorry.
The end, which already comes too soon,
She made come even sooner.
Timesands trickling from the moon.
For one morning Poppy was nowhere to be
found.
Never did I, or anyone, see her again.
As if she had never existed.
As if she had been but a dream.
As if she had been out of time,
All this time. All the time.
Words crumbled where her roots had
been.
Butterflies did lose their colours,
But no other calamity befell.
For me the world an empty shell.
Lying face down in the dirt
Or wriggling into some fissure
And ask the stars if they'd seen her
go.
Yet their vigil had been futile.
Not even the trace of a root was to be
found.
As if she had vaporised.
I was born on a blade of grass,
One rainy Monday afternoon.
Next day my cheek was pressed
On the mirroring pane of a raindrop.
I sighed.
The weariness I felt then was the same
as now's.
She had me wait, then she went.
She needn't have gone this far if she
fled.
She should have fought if brutal force
took her.
I could have gone through hell for her.
I would have fought God had He been the
one to blame.
I cannot live without the possibility
of her love.
I don't know where she was born.
I don't know if she loved me.
Did she have friends apart from me?
Can she know I rue the day she was
torn?
Fact is: her smile shone like a star.
Her petals had the radiance of
fireflies
And the promptness of lightning.
Oftentimes did the mist embrace her.
She never looked so bright as then.
Mayhap she deemed me too lean.
Mayhap she was all deceit and lies.
Mayhap she felt nothing but scorn.
Mayhap we are wrong to mourn.
Mayhap she hastened her demise.
Natheless she probably was
All things considered
Standing on a blade of grass
– Yes – the being I loved
The most.
