I come to speak and have no words to say:
What words of mine could now be heard by you?
For I am here, and you are gone away.

I knew that I would live to see this day,
Yet, now it’s come, I can’t believe it’s true –
But this is not what I have come to say.

I shan’t speak. I shall find some other way
To do the thing that I have come to do.
– And what is that? To come, and go away …

A thought occurs: Why don’t I simply stay?
If you are here, then I can be here too!
… And if I stayed all day, what would I say?

It seems I have the hardest part to play,
And shall be glad when this last act is through.
And timelessly the seconds slip away

‘I saw my father: cold and dead he lay,
His looks, his face, his flesh I scarcely knew.’
– Is this the utmost I can find to say?
Dear God, why have you taken him away?

First published in Acumen, May 2007

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