Melancholic Trip

Melancholic Trip

By Fray Narte

1 

my spine is a bridge that burns — 

bones most breakable, like memories of driftwoods collected as a kid,

i now feed to a bonfire of blistered cyclamens. 

2 

my spine is a bridge of neither grandeur nor history. 

it burns away and falls, quietly in the night, like an unknown laborer.

some of us die this way. 

3 

the reason for this poem evades me, 

but the heart must write of its sorrows undisclosed to the soul.

they remain to be unrecognized parts of a burning town. 

4 

now, i speak in tongues unfamiliar to myself. 

i write a poem i'm bound to forget. 

i stand in the baptism of a child i do not know. 

i do it anyway. 

5 

i bring her driftwoods from the water, 

mourning under a burning bridge; 

soon the last beam falls apart 

and i fall apart 

in forgettable, graceless light 

this: sorrow with no name, 

i write it anyway. 

this: sorrow undisclosed. 

i tell it anyway. 

this: sorrow unrecognized. 

i feel it anyway.