What came first:
the gate or the door?
To stand and to wait
at a door or a gate
is the perfect expression
of humanity’s progression:
closing and enclosing things
fencing things and rowing things
or even to take offence
at what is without or within
this gate or that door.
A silent ceiling of green,
the canopy curves over the
head of the hunched figure hurrying below.
Feet rustle over leaves
with careful tread
as darkness gathers
at the edges
and creeps inwards.
He licks his lips,
a nervous twitching at the corner of his eye
as he turns his head from side to side
and listens.
The door rears up;
the end of the tunnel glows dully.
Polished wood, each pane of glass a watchful eye
tapered to a point at the crest of the curve.
The figure stops, falters,
shifts from one ball to the other.
The door leads neither out nor in
only through,
only forwards,
behind it the tunnel of green has closed
like the mouth of a beast.
The bricks in the wall of the arch of the door lay sealed,
one on top of the other
like bodies in a mass grave.
To knock
or to wait?
It grasps the handle and
pushes with all of its weight
on the body of Time itself.
Our void,
the black that swallows,
the cage that encloses,
not beginning or ending
or feeling or willing.
The break
then the fall.
Anna Translates 