Freedom

At times, as I watch, it seems as though my country's body floats down somewhere on the river. Left alone, I grow into a half-disembodied bamboo, its lower part sunk into itself on the bank. Here, old widows and dying men cherish their freedom, bowing time after time in obstinate prayers. While children scream with this desire for freedom to transform the world without even laying hands on it. In my blindness, at times I fear I'd wander back to either of them. In order for me not to lose face, it is necessary for me to be alone. Not to meet the woman and her child in that remote village in the hills who never had even a little rice for their one daily meal these fifty years. And not to see the uncaught, bloodied light of sunsets cling to the tall white columns of Parliament House. In the new temple man has built nearby, the priest is the one who knows freedom, while God hides in the dark like an alien. And each day I keep looking for the light shadows find excuses to keep. Trying to find the only freedom I know, the freedom of the body when it's alone. The freedom of the silent shale, the moonless coal, the beds of streams of the sleeping god. I keep the ashes away, try not to wear them on my forehead.