The Poets

The poets have grown mute, listless.

They have ashes in their mouths.

Their eyes are shut.
They have forgotten the words to the old songs.

I sit beside a green pond. 
The water is cloudy.

It is snowing somewhere but not here.

I’m often awakened by dreams in the night,

by shadows 
that have not yet learned how to speak.

A mother calls out to her child 
from an opened window

but he does not hear her voice.

The world is big and vast.

I scribble these notes in the air

and a cold wind carries them away.