We Gave Them No Mirrors

We gave them no mirrors, those solitary
and unclaimed who share hot midsummer winds.
Denied reflections for relief
on inside surfaces of unknown regions.
 Unkept, unimpaired, unbefriended;
 unwashed?
   Unknown.

Those acrid breezes pass wilderness
whose every forest leaf cannot be known,
but known that each is expelled,
then carried on windborne twigs,
long since buried in ancient humus.

Phantoms are the eyes, the voices
that glint and steal our reflections.
But leaves, yet tethered and green,
on what do they reflect? Blown
from birth to death on a zephyr
whose warm, moist current nurtures,
then coils up, strikes searingly, and moves on.

Shout, shout, shout
into the scorching wind, lest our
shoes be topped by fresh humus
from the soil of Homewood Garden,
where forty-four, and more, are
rendered, finalized, transformed, put to rest
Claimed not by society, but buried by the body-politic.

We gave them no mirrors (c) 1995, R.A.Falesch

text and music by
R. Albert Falesch

                 Montrose Harbor

This place has come again, still chronicling,
etching wisps of lifetimes on its terraced shore.

     Truths lie sleeping in these rocks, hurled before me:
     distant memories of uncertain children await their call.

Circling gulls seek signal from the half-bright
horizon of dawn's sleeping eyelids, whose awakening glow
offered ten-thousand greetings since he passed by.

     Who was he, what did I take from him?
     They will tell me,
         they will tell me...

An exquisite poem by one of the great masters.