DARKNESS OR LIGHT

Untitled 5

Your darkness, or was it my light
 muffled?
Our phases of love and indifference
intertwine like day and night;
like the light of distant stars,
light-years between, as  from the star and earth,
our messages reached
but the meanings followed after aeons had passed.
Your flaws?
They were screens of smoke
generated by the campfires of the caravans passing by.
and I was a straggler who stayed behind
drawn into your world of anguished sorrow
wondering whether you were a little sparrow
or a clown weeping behind a mask that could not be torn apart
or a saint whom the caravan forgot to take along.
I linger with those who do not walk with the crowd;
I lingered to look behind
because I was tired of being dragged with the caravan;
the caravan in a hurry to reach the morrow.
I saw you singing magic songs, the songs I could scarcely follow.
Some melodies I had heard and faintly recalled.
In a deeper trance, they urged me to turn
  to hear a language that spoke no words I knew,
yet sounded like some familiar names
uttered with an intensity, an intimacy
 that warmed me up in my winter gloom

My caravan is waiting in perplexity.
I have no heart to leave you and go.
But go I must , if not today, someday I must.