The Letters Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

Strange, after so many forgotten years,
to find these letters here in a package
in a trunk, yellowed and brittle and kindlier
with the ultimate frailty of age.

Is it then time alone that alters words
in the heart or the mind or the eye?
That in or of itself so effortlessly blurs
the senses and can so unobtrusively nullify

one’s whole existence? A life
turned from its chosen course:
from lover to a stranger’s wife!
Here in my hands all that remorse

now lies in words so frail and brittle.
Can what transformed a life now mean so little?