And finally, Godot arrives Panting, gasping Through copulations Of breath and speed. Her hair has gone grey, Streams of panic sulk as weight Under her eyes. At the ripe of youth, She is already old. She was a kid when she left, But rubble got in the way, And the wires snipped her legs.
Godot was chewing on a pencil butt When the roof of her class crashed down, All her classmates died, All the teachers died, All the books and blackboards And their makers and the printing press died, The walls of the class and their paint And painters All shared a tombstone; The town square, Was narrow for breath, Fractured by ash And all names were aborted Before winter. But she made it through To her home, which was only A yellowing concrete building With a green iron gate, But was also now the limbs of her sister Sticking out of the window, The blood of her father Gone dry on the courtyard, And her mother’s veil, Ripped against will And stitched into a cry.
Godot was once a child, She blew soap bubbles into the sun, She preferred the purple crayon For skies And liked her nails painted blue, Although she bit most of it off. She hated the noise of missiles And pocketed dandelions in June. She had a favourite number She wouldn’t tell anyone, She still had a tooth growing When she made it across the border alone, She had stains of pomegranate juice On her shirt.
Godot was sent to find two men Who groaned against darkness, Deep into the infinite womb of wait, Two who waited for her Through rope and religion. Even when death has blackened the dead heart, Even as the desert has grown into the home And the heart has spat its last gasp On its open grave, Even as the last kiss is removed from lips Colder than life, Godot must arrive, Somehow, from some broken crevice of silence, From some dark muscle of tremors, From some nervous edge of fallen sounds, Godot must arrive.
But when Godot arrives, All of earth is barren, And all of sky is mute. The gates are eaten with fire. Carpets of olive and cedar Lay moulded by death; No place for a beast to pass, No neck for a kiss to rest. The Word falls short of words, And where there waited two men Is now a wasteland of wait, For even faith forgets, And patience gets The better of men, Save those hollow shells That die in wait And those That wait for death.
Article 19 