I Have Nothing To Say To Your Pain Poem by RIC BASTASA

i have nothing to say.
i will sit beside you and just look at your face.
i am at loss of words
there is no punctuation to ease the wreck
of the sentences of pain not breathing anymore to rest
but always wailing as though there is no end to your paragraphs.

what words are needed, i ask myself, to ease your pain?

i was there. i am still here. Past lives that still haunt
secretly in the furrows of our foreheads.
was i a nomad in the sahara?
was i a king in one of the kingdoms of Java?
have i killed a brother? or a father?

why are my hands trembling like some stilt houses
in the rivers of Kwai?

i am hearing voices from the deepest caves of India.
The past is not past. It is still here in the present
trying to tell me about what is there that i have not seen.

i look at you again. You have slept in my arms.