the day the poetry ended

All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere.
---Aleksander Hermon.

The day the poetry ended there will be no more words, no more words from me to you; or from you to me. There will be no word to match the feeling, no turn of phrase to match the heart or the turning of your heels. Love and fear, and that type of thing, she said.

The day the poetry ended I will walk in the winter light at 11 o'clock in the morning, unseen by any living soul. The sparrow will sing uninterrupted. My hands will be in my pockets and I will have no thoughts of any particular note in my head.

I shall walk next to the dark river, hopelessly out of time, achieving a rare "smallness", much sought after nowadays, my breath close by my face.

In time there will be other poems and other readers, other discoveries and other roads, none of which I will comprehend or even notice.

In my deep pocket I will keep with me a list of collective nouns to remind me of the old days, and a chestnut that once fell before its time from the grand tree outside my house. I shall still look for A Third Concept of Liberty, taken from me in the back alleyway by the garages, on a night when your life spun around your head.

At 6 o'clock I will walk up the hill against the stream of returning workers and with a clear mind and loose change buy some smoked mackerel. It will be a meaningful act. Somewhere else in the world a man will send a woman a poem and she will fall in love. Even when translated it sails over me. And still, I know what it means.

The day the poetry ended I shall walk oblivious of the shadows, with a firm and stylish stride into the world that no longer exists, walk in no particular direction with nothing but my thick protective coat and sturdy hat that keeps the light off my face, just the way my father walks...