WALKING TO THE MARKET

Walking in the late afternoon's

ample sunlight, through

the dying village's silent streets,

reading The Sun Also Rises

once again I am trying to make sense

of my own existence via words

written by dead hands.

From the context of fallow fields

with flowers, empty houses

and a lone cyclist under

blue skies, bright green canopies

where I can't make a path

through the maze of life as it lays,

to the Paris of the roaring twenties.

Same human problems

in more elevated circumstances,

same thunder in the distance.

Yet I can't forget which way

Hemingway found to exit

his own maze; if

death is an exit

instead of fossilization in

the deep geology of human time.

To exist instead of exiting

has its own moments of briefest

redemption, when you bear

what you have done

and still want these long days

that leave no memories

to go on, in the faint hope

of a Deus ex machina

or just a metaphorical axe

to cut down the maze itself.

How many have I passed,

unnoticed?

01.07.2019