HOW MANY TIMES?

 

Being not completely out,

not yet, the brief candle,

how many times

you have let yourself go

exploiting the momentum,

the silence of those

hearing you,

maybe listening,

how many times you have

kept speaking pretending

not to notice the surrounding

indifference

 

and have repeated

the same sentence

which hides another, the real one,

or hides simply emptiness

or a vacancy or the vertigo

of the unspeakable

for which you would need

another courage,

another forage,

 

how many times

you have not been able

to step into a full stop,

driven by your own windmill,

swirling in the chill,

pretending a thrill

entwined in your own reel.

 

And the sea is still

and still spreading, still and spreading,

how relentlessly and uselessly

you have been faring while fearing

the silence that is?