I Saw Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

I saw
That floating in the so-called garbage
Adown the dirty river waters went
Heads of skeletons, large,
Small,
Unequal in size and shape:
I saw


I said: This must be the skull of Human;
This must be the skull of Cat;
This must be the skull of Squirrel
This must be the skull of Rat.

Down the slimy bank an aged hedgehog
On its unclean and sympathetic feet
Went slow plodding sinking
Now and then
On the dirty mud-banks floating
By half in the brimming waters
When the river rose its banks a little.

Then
Seeing me the Hedgehog stopped:
Its tiny eyes
Looked red at me and stared balefully
At first
Then
In chronological order Fear
Seized upon them and transfixed
For a moment Hedgehog and its eyes:
As if glued in that dreary atmosphere.


Yet
Fear has its reprieve, and we must seize it:
As soon as the reprieve of Fear came
Fast turned the Hedgehog its back to me
And in the glooming bushes disappeared
Amidst the rustling of animals quarreling
The flying of a feather and a tuft of hair
And then silence back again

Meanwhile
The river flowed as dreary as before
Styx-like though not in any nether world
But in the world of all of us it flowed.


I saw
That floating in the so-called garbage
Adown the dirty river waters went
Heads of skeletons, large,
Small,
Unequal in size and shape:
I saw

And the stars fell slow and by little
And their falling only I saw, only I.

And that is near to the Dawn, said I
Though
Dreary and dirty the river flowed as before
Dreary and dirty.