EXISTENCE                                                                          

Breathe in the air, it is free, ye poor, ye

refugees. Breathe deep and tell me

how it feels to have nothing but that

air in your mouth and lungs, so

slowly sucked in, seeped out;

barely a movement of your limbs,

shout to me, please, so I can

tell that you are not dead, not yet.

Tongues tired of trying to moisten mouths,

dried, thick, a rough cut wooden wedge,

no longer a living thing, just there, in the way,

nothing to say; couldn’t say it anyway.

 

You sit in family groups, silent, close,

supporting each other through proximity;

imperceptible shifting of gaze from

son to daughter to grandfather, mother,

eyes glazed, now closing with the

glare of a rising sun, and the gusts of a

sand-filled wind cutting, stinging your face.

A man will not look at his wife as he has

failed his family; she looks at her feet as she

cannot keep his young alive, milk dry.

What does bare existence sound like? I

listen and hear nothing, no-one is disturbed.

 

Meanwhile, others plan packed-full

CV lives, confident of living them, work hard

(but spend some time sorting things with

little lies and promises – not intended to be kept –

all part of being born in temperate, peaceful lands);

the eternal lottery of where we happen to be dropped:

we hit the bed, the birthing pool, the sand,

pushed out to cries of delight, face fanned;

a tiny hand closes round a mother’s finger, then

all change! One may linger but others may not;

one will live but another must give her

life for the child. One prepares a blue bedroom,

another makes space in a freezing tent and

prays for some sweet convulsion of the land, some

heaven-sent levelling, some restart of the game.

 

She knows, deep down, no change, her life a

single grain in the desert of the unnamed.

What point has consciousness that has no

occupant? Ever a void, it has the dull, deep

ache of an empty belly in her head; she’d

like instead to switch awareness off –

it has no present, no future feature, just the

bleak certainty of the past to last a lifetime.

Can hope spring eternal from such a heavy heart?

Hope is for those who have seen a smile, have

caught the eye of one outside. Hope is just a

devil who, every time she looks for light,

flicks the switch and leaves the dark, the black,

another lash across her back.

 

Cast out grinning hope, ye poor, ye

refugees. Breathe deep and blow out

hope for good, hope the cheat, the

god of humiliation, the prince of indignity.

Your eyes say, nay insist, that you be left to

drain your minds of humankind, just as your

bellies cease to beg attention, crave intervention –

such is the poverty of your inheritance.

There is no sound, the slow waste of life is

silent, uncelebrated, unseen, obscene.

No issues to raise, nothing to be said of

people just born, then nothing, then dead?

 

 

© Peter Taylor