Ch’aski

“Déjame mirarte por esa ventana que por las mañanas yo veo en tus ojos — el brillo de tu alma, ¡color solitario!  Déjame decirte que en mis pensamientos, yo llevo tus sueños y tus sentimientos — y mi alma siente morirse pequeña….”  Kjarkas–”La ventana”

A million miles, my footsteps pounding
Across the invisible stretch of sky,
Lighted by stars,
Dodging the cries of babies,
The slamming of car doors,
The music of neighbors,
And the sound of searing silence.
Every night, running, sprinting
Through time, through space, to your side
With my feet nailed to the floor
And the moon’s gaze turning each tear to liquid silver.
My heart racing,
I see you,
Lonelier than you know,
In an embrace you never felt.
Every night, I chased the stars—so close—
Up there
To touch,
Running with my peasant’s bag of magical whispers
To bring you a song
And go back again to my hell
Where I could burn the feelings out of myself with the same melodies.
I took flight into the night
Once I allowed myself to break the chains,
Carried safely back into a morning
That didn’t dawn over you.
For you, who traversed time, traversed space
With your child’s bouquet of magical promises
To bring me a kiss
Never met me where the stars meet the ground.

*Ch’aski, in the Quechua language, means “messenger” or “courier.”

To the rooftops!…

Time.
Every sinking sun heralds another day that I will never know
And yet that I’ve already lived.
Like a farcical princess in a real dungeon—
A refugee
Of the all-consuming, merciless beast terrorizing the sacred hillsides below—
I watch from my window
As the bleeding sky before my eyes
Fades somewhere else into a festive night
Of friends, of music, of spontaneity, of life.
And while the spirits of ignorance dance, and whirl and meld,
And crescendo into the colorful laughter of abandon,
My own voice, my own form are absent,
While I watch and ponder the fate
Of the beaten, the violated, the penniless –
Because, tonight, their dusk, their chill is mine.
And we are all together.
And we are all alone.
And we are all forgotten.
And I learn all too late that the height of a cloudless summer
Is a time I would infinitely rather spend in the damp cover of the glistening snow,
And that yet another night delivered on the icy tails of the autumn wind,
Leads at this very moment into a joyous spring that I will never regain
And binds me, helpless, to the certainty that these
Are hours I will never recover.
So now that I—
My dreams, my soul, my hopes, my passions—
Have become, for myself, simply too much,
The fear twists deep within me that I’m still so very far from enough
And that perhaps it’s too late to prove
That I ever might be.

 

 “Listen as the wind blows from across the great divide — voices trapped in yearning, memories trapped in time.  The night is my companion and solitude, my guide.  Would I spend forever here and not be satisfied?”  – Sarah McLachlan (Opening lyrics of “Possession”)