Sworn to silence, words stolen <br />By a sullen gestapo of love. <br /> <br />A lone echo trapped in a glass jar. <br />The mille-tendernesses of a world <br /> <br />Banished, sand banks roll swiftly <br />Into the deep with insurmountable waves <br /> <br />Controlled by the tidal launches <br />Of marsh-like moons. A lizard eats ash <br /> <br />As if the sustenance of an intrepid ant <br />lies beneath the surface of timbers. <br /> <br />Human singe, mosquitoes bite the pallid <br />Palm fronds of the skin of an irreverant Sunday <br /> <br />Walking through a foggy field of gunfire quakes <br />Cutting the air as I drove down the back road away. <br /> <br />A cracked glass table where words were once written. <br />Syllables smoked in your garden where nothing grows. <br /> <br />Only ashes. Evidence of a habit washed by rain. <br />More foul than the usual dreary weather <br /> <br />He spoke only once with the platitudes <br />Of his existence. Ivy grew as a weed <br /> <br />About us. There we died, there in silence. <br />More ash beside unused wellies, our galoshes of undertow. <br /> <br />A snail slides unglued to its rough surface. <br />A bird chirps an unheard familiar song. <br /> <br />Forgotten silencer. Only one bullet <br />I bite quietly. Nothing left to say, <br /> <br />To wipe clean. Only torn respites of grief <br />Slate roofs, dislodged asphalt <br /> <br />The cackle of a flightless bird <br />Never confessing its love <br /> <br />For snowdrifts, the burdensome ice. <br />Watching comely seasons thawing before us <br /> <br />As if a film, time-lapsed, imperial subjects. <br />The ending, making sense of Switzerland, <br /> <br />Climbing wearily the jungfraujoch <br />A high train to nowhere unraveling <br /> <br />The petty poetic earth below us. Overhead <br />The teetering of a small helicopter in a stillborn air. <br /> <br />A swarm still searching for you, I am here, <br />Awaiting this bon-voyage of ancient dreams, <br /> <br />Buildings erect as tombstones, <br />All creatures of oblivion passing by <br /> <br />The sun’s mercurial orange, <br />Our preparedness for goodnight.<br /><br />MARINA GIPPS<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bon-voyage-of-dreams-or-making-sense-of-switzerland/
