the drama unfolds
and the young grow old
while the old go with a curse
I myself am grown into my fifties
and the people I’ve known
who called me Little Boy
have been called to dust and urn and to river over the decades;
and the kids I would kneel before to speak with them
now they say: Do I see you with hunched shoulders?
the earthly hours pass
and generations come and go
with little knowing though of their own flow
the drama unfolds
and the young grow old
while the old go
with a last bite of a fried chicken
places have changed
and villages and forests lain bare
and once where I stood admiring angsanas
and mango trees and peacocks
now I admire lilly-pillies
and hold the koala and the kangaroo as mascots;
people I have called mother, father
and uncle and aunty and grandmother
they now have gone, some without even a good-bye
some smiling and some with unintelligible mutterings
and ah, some in unendurable suffering
while I walk now as time unfurls like a flag in the square;
and the witnesses
of uncountable generations
of immeasurable life
those stars and the sun and the moon
keep me quiet company
and the sunlight uses the leaves in the garden
to whisper to me the secrets of things;
and in my leisure
these words I speak to you
and when I’m gone
through these you may speak with me;
and the ones I have told stories to
now re-tell the stories to their young
and time, interrupting its slumber,
lifts its head like a garden in the snake
awhile
sees all is right, all flowing as it would expect,
and looks around and gives me a look too
and goes back to sleep;
ah, the drama unfolds
and the young grow old
while the old go with a wink