Old timer, third-rate Orpheus
Lacking even a make-believe Eurydice,
A thousand million steps
And only now do you notice
These ghostly contraptions attached to your feet.
You’re like a windmill on toothpicks
Don’t go near fire.
Don’t try to walk on water.
You’re teetering, you are about to trip
And fall on your face.
Screech-owls and buzzards nest
On your shoulders.
You can see as far as Nebraska.
There’s a little house on the prairie
For you to approach and knock.
Three mighty blows with your stilt
And they scatter like popped corn.
The feast of Cerberus is at hand,
You shout.
Latch on little white hen,
We are going the way of all flesh!
These are the stilts of a melancholy
Drifter talking.
Two straws on their way to the sunset.
We stand like sentries
Keeping the sky company.
Time cannot fall asleep nor can eternity.
Awake they think
And thinking they deepen the silence.
High up there on my stilts
I’m eavesdropping.