LAND AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE Poem by Alfred Schaffer

And then the curtain rises, the little red word EXIT reassures us.
Once more you concentrate on the wrong things, at a distance you even
make me think of someone else. With that cigarette dangling from your mouth,
a travel guide in your left hand, your weapon in your right. Suspicious,

so much attention to detail. Is all that reverence in place? How far does
your echo carry? Our urge to look exceeds all expectations, but that's
nothing for you to worry about, it's not your fault, you standing there
like that, the distance exposed: the image cannot be erased again.

Was something due to happen? Or is it already over, the finger on the trigger,
the convoluting smoke - I can't have done that you just get to think, I
simply can't have done that. All that empty suspicion, shaped of the
sort of stuff, in a past long-gone, that dreams were made of.