How Long This Day of Mine
       

1.
Is it not shameful
to outlive one's friends?

2.
Do the dead see, once they have settled
in their death,
what they left behind on the road
where they deserted us?
I wonder,
do they realize the loneliness of the road
once they have left it?
Do they laugh in their death
at our struggling in the strait they have already crossed?
Do they pity us when they look back at where we are?
Do they rejoice in their hearts, that they have made it?
Oh! How beautiful death is,
if the dead look back at the loneliness of the road
once they have settled.

3.
I look behind me
at each day that passes.
I find it calm, composed
and free,
staring at me with pity,
neither bored nor lonely.
This is how the day passes upon me.
It survives
and hands me coldly to another.
Am I now in another?
This is how the day passes without me
and clears behind me.

4.
Oh! How short life is,
and how long this day of mine!

                                (2/1/1993)

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Copyright © 2017 Jawdat Fakhreddine All rights reserved
from Lighthouse for the Drowning
BOA Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission