Departure

You stand in the doorway holding
a child in your arms. Stars
are failing, streets empty
and the silence
is complete except for your heart
and my heart beating.

Evil time.

This is the night that was bound to come.

Somewhere the moon passes over water.
The river's depths are immense
to one who has only touched the surface
in this life.

My son wakes to your hands supporting
his every motion, begins singing
the vowels of his first word.

Winter is a hard thing in a strange country.
Where is the time
when a light, a hearth burned for us?

This is what we are left with:
stories concerning my death.
That image growing larger.

Stanzas three and six are translations
from the poem Böse Zeit by Hermann Hesse