A Shadow Of Belief Poem by Joanne Togati

I half lower my eyes
so you won't know me,
yet I know you see my skin,
a white washed gold
and my eyes
two dark almonds.

My feet at one end, carry me
Past this asphalt street
Out into the choking city
with its too many automobiles.
It is my wearisome thought
Which turns me this way, not that
My knowledge of being a remnant
Of an age and culture almost past
Of red coral lakes imbedded with riches
Of hard shelled and finned penetrators of the deep
Of figs of India
Of scorched dusty roads leading to the graves
Of olive and lemon.

Far into my past
I walked with hair long and blowing.
For the last time,
the ascent to the top of the mountain
sent a hint of sea and the smell of fresh earth
to a lingering halt.
The new smells of dried lizard skins and decaying fruits
played with my nostrils
Seeped in through my pores
The sweet stench of rotting lemons

It makes me doleful to think of myself
Once as pure
in a moment of elapsing time
like waves erasing a coastline

I was filled only with the desire then
of aligning myself to such
Elements
of decomposition
and millenia transformation
So that I
could return back into her
And be a host for creatures
More blessed than I could ever aspire.
If I could reach where I itched to go
To become that idea that in all these years I never
Allowed myself to forget
The smiling lake of sinistisia
The sweet white morning glory on the vine
The grape of forgetfulness in a place
that would never see me forget
I longed so to be
The wishmaker,
The painter of many faces
The dancer on a silver thread
But such a pure passion can not endure
I believed
It corrupts and vomits itself,
It flies itself too high then bends backwards
Like an acrobat falling from the wire
While the circus drums carry on
Such a purity of passion can not
Remain itself

Silent hope ends my everyday
that I should live with nothing less.
The sunrise inspires
a language beaming
sacred sounds
From all corners of the earth
Into my ear
yet the melody lingers there at the corners of my mouth
like the juice of sour grapes
On nights like these.

The right is mine
To understand her meaning she says,
And welcome all prosperous fated change
Without the score of sadness so common
To my heart
To my soul that remembers a love unseen
A love never returning in the same form again
Yet her eyes do not deceive
although they erase every memory
so that I may play an innocent dream
Of the world
once again.