Just a small whisper
Like a stranger on the subway
There and not there
Sitting across,
Reading or just staring at words
Not a life you recognise
Because of everything else
Maybe there for a long moment
But hardly at all
(There, just a whisper
There it is and goes
Away and off on nothing substantial
But the air that you breathe)
There we once were, whispers
Hidden inside conversations
Spirits of beautiful cotton fabrications
In the deafening wrecks of factory halls
Neither recalled nor forgotten
Just echoes whose origins
Are long gone or delayed
(There is simply not enough time
To crane a neck closer
To a dear mouth
To concentrate
Because the days are not alive
Because of everything else
You know, you know)
Listen, a whisper
Maybe two or more
In the clanking incongruence
Of an old disassembled carriage
Just above on the hard, oily ground
There we are or were, fleetingly
Briefly and contentedly
Forever quietly making ourselves heard
To each other for no time at all.
