PROMPTER Poem by Peter Verhelst

What could have been us:

under all our clamour the man
who wasn't here
keeps silent about the woman he knew,

and under all our silence the woman
who was here with the man she never met
clamours.

Each in a room of our own we look out
at the sea and what appears there, sunlight,
but we don't know who we are,
never do we see who rises from the water
and looks at us without knowing our names.
Until the surf turns white
and they swim away again.

I longed

to protect everyone from the worst, but
the best is yet to come.