Time and Silence

Poetry

"I followed your whispers across oceans and deserts.

In between times and silences,

I searched for you in unknown landscapes

that seemed only possible in the sacred imagination of painters.

I saw women threshing wheat on doorsteps,

and the old ones waiting for the passing of clouds.

Children lit fires all along the paths,

and scattered them with flowers that pierced the sky like stars.

Songs came and went from the center of the earth,

Accompanied by silence.

Silence became song.

Days and nights went by.

I left for the white desert, there,

The temples of men rose against the skies.

Time turned the stones to the color of eternity.

In the distance, a child, the sand, a pyramid became one.

The perfume of incense lingered in smokes that led to invisible gardens.

I walked with a man they call the Guardian of Isis to the top of a mountain

and together we lit candles illuminating the valley lost in fog.

Women and children prayed for salvation calling upon the black sun.

An old woman spoke of all she had seen—

thousands of white birds descending from the sky,

carrying away the children who longed to see the ocean,

then they were transformed into rivers

that cross the world to extinguish the fires of men.

The children never returned

but the rivers colored the flowers and the landscapes.

Since then days come and go

and I walk along the river banks

with the echo of your whispers as my only guide.

Sometimes I stare at the sky,

hoping secretly

to see a white bird born from the clouds,

the ancient Phoenix."

C.HdF