Poem of the Day

TO RAJA RAO
 

Raja, I wish I knewthe cause of that malady.

For years I could not acceptthe place I was in.I felt I should be somewhere else.

A city, trees, human voiceslacked the quality of presence.I would live by the hope of moving on.

Somewhere else there was a city of real presence,of real trees and voices and friendship and love.

Link, if you wish, my peculiar case(on the border of schizophrenia)to the messianic hopeof my civilization.

Ill at ease in the tyranny, ill at ease in the republic,in the one I longed for freedom, in the other for the end of corruption.Building in my mind a permanent polisforever deprived of aimless bustle.

I learned at last to say: this is my home,here, before the glowing coal of ocean sunsets,on the shore which faces the shores of your Asia,in a great republic, moderately corrupt.

Raja, this did not cure meof my guilt and shame.A shame of failing to bewhat I should have been.

The image of myselfgrows gigantic on the walland against itmy miserable shadow.

That's h…