Unfold the table: cut and deal the cards.
It would be perfect, if you only lacked
That strange hypocrisy: but deal the cards.
These pictured Kings and Royalties contract
The great dishevelled world of my distress
Into an unsuspected tenderness.
What story did you tell behind my back?
I know it: from my worst you made your best.
You are the knave, the liar in the pack,
Too human always, childheart, to be honest.
Yet something we have shared compels your claim
To an emotion that I cannot name.
You are as brutal as a child, yet shy
And like a child: my memories turn to ink:
Buried in all our pasts are greed and lies,
Anger and hateful actions: and I think
That frigid chumminess of my boyhood
Came closest to a deep material good.
O now we stare, sight with lost stances blended,
Each to himself a shadow on a screen.
Tomorrow our accustomed life is ended,
Plans must be made, this dull familiar scene
Be done with, roots torn up where we began.
Smiling at you, I know we shall not smile together again.
Dom Moraes
Goan Poet
July 1938-June 2004
Goan Poet
July 1938-June 2004
