The Last Passer-By Poem by Soran M. H

Like an old man who has known the world through to its final disappointments,
he stands at a distance, contemplating the froth of the water at the river's edge, without a word,
like a patient under anaesthesia who has only just awakened from an operation that excised the last remnant of his desire to survive.
Thus, for the final time, he entrusts his buried anger to the wind and listens to what is left unsaid.
•
One foot of yours is planted firmly on the edge of the wall, the other suspended above the road;
as though you belong neither to the bank from which you came nor to the bank towards which you are bound.
To your right, a smiling face; to your left, a scowling one.
Each has its own certainties, each its own loves and hatreds,
while within your chest the two opposites make peace with your existence.
•
Behind you, the trees bleed their memories, and the gardens flush red,
as though spring were a crime whose perpetrator has never been found.
Before you, disfigured faces gaze in your direction,
as though death had sent them a letter and then forgotten to sign it,
leaving it suspended in their eyes.
•
For longer than anyone can remember, you have been asking yourself: Who are you?
Your pockets are heavy with torn banknotes, your hands lie open upon emptiness,
like two long branches the tree forgot to reclaim when it abandoned its place.
Your first name is Eastern, your second Western;
and somewhere between the two, the name that was truly yours lost its way.
You no longer know which one calls out to you, and which one buries you alive beneath the glass of the mirror.
•
From a distance, you seem to be searching for a memory,
for something that slipped through the fingers of time,
or for a face worn thin by sorrow, a face that knew you before you learned how to hide yourself from ghosts.
•
You search the features of faces, the bridges, the hilltops, the bends in the roads;
you scour the places you once passed through for some trace of yourself.
The alleyways used to know you; they would run ahead of your footsteps to open their doors.
Now, the roads will not grant you even a passing greeting.
Still, the echo of your footsteps resounds through the narrow, winding alleys,
crowded with the remnants of those who passed through and never returned.
Can you hear it?
It is the echo of another passer-by, the last of them,
who slipped out of the scene and walked on.
A month, a year, an entire century -
how long has it been since then?
You do not know.
For here, time turns upon itself,
like a soul that has lost its body, like a body that no longer remembers which soul once dwelt within it.
Which lost the other?
And so... you search the memory of the walls.
•
In this city, everyone is a stranger.
It seems a long time has passed since funerals were held for them in distant lands.
Perhaps their names were carved upon cold headstones, perhaps roses were scattered over their graves,
while their bodies went on crossing the streets without a destination.
Perhaps the absent no longer know the way home.
As for the city, it opens its doors to the morning, closes them upon the evening,
and goes on swallowing the footsteps of those who pass through,
as though it had never swallowed anything before.
And you, you who stand upon the bridge, one foot on one side, the other on a side without a name -
do not gaze into the water for too long.
You may see yourself there. Or you may see nothing at all.
But the soul, long ago, left this place behind.
And perhaps now, in another city, it stands upon another bridge,
asking those who pass by if they have seen you.