The Taste of Solitude

Solitude is my only love—

it writes itself without commas or semicolons.
I turn leaf-green in the morning wind,
lay my head in its quiet lap.
Light and pain walk through my mind,
yet I have set them aside—
steadfast till the end.

Death, in its final arithmetic,
has brought a dream to my door—
a holy love,
gentle enough to sit beside my silence.
The sky leans down,
offering its hand in tenderness.

I have wandered along the pavements of hell,
where a lonely child wept.
I placed my palm
on the cool brow of conscience.
In the vow of pure truth
I have asked, quietly—
how far can a burden carry a soul?

Beyond the reach of villages,
the foxes will call again and again.
Crickets will thread their songs through the night.
In my courtyard, new blossoms open,
and I rise awake in the absorbed darkness,
as the world quivers with sudden joy.

In the staged rooms of high apartments
an old man sits—
half-lit, half-shadow,
a prisoner without chains,
the cold nearness of steel at his side.

In the hush of noon,
on a third-floor terrace,
a girl of sixteen climbs in silence,
takes her baptism in sunlight,
then turns to face the earth
and descends—
into a boundless, invisible abyss.

And here I stay,
bent and broken,
without compass,
forever alone.
On the bridge of what might be
a cold union stirs awake;
in the dark the narrow crossing shrinks,
storm and shore becoming one.

Yet still—
I love myself.
I drink deep of solitude’s flavour.
And with a single eye
I behold the shape of the world.