O, times of walking down that one-way street!
Always to find your footsteps among the clatter
On dreamy sidewalks.
And how many times have I heard
Even your slightest whispers
Above hungry engines and thunders
Of some passing train? I wonder.
And when it rained, the earth suffused with your scent
I found you plastered on the gray walls,
Etched on the thirsty asphalt roads
Mixed in the dust and smoke.
Like a river – that one-way street
(I once said to you, remember?)
And we are but wrecks on its wake.
I can’t help but feel that I am still
That piece of fallen branch
Hopelessly being carried by the torrent
Always getting back—
To you.
Even as I’ve reached now the calmer seas
And lie under a silver blanket of silence,
The City’s music still hums in my ears:
There is harmony in the noise, my dear
Listen: a delicious, ghostly harmony
Seething with your own caramel voice.
You give life to that City.
Alas, I am ever lost
In its enchanted alleys.
