Shalom Aleichem

The long days are gone already

Grass prepares to stop growing

The fields and trees take on a sepia tint

Rivers begin to change their courses to accommodate the coming winter

Colour is leached out of the landscape.

Mosquitos do their final, annoying blood-sucking

We are dust and shadow. Again.

Who knows whether we will survive another winter

The gods above? I flee the calloused hands of the unlettered

As they grab at me, gimme: food, money, houses, I need, food, shelter, I need...

My father arranged his funeral last week

He said: “life is not a race, it is the practice of unspoken eloquence;”

There is no resoration of the chaste Diana of the darkness,

We have the power to burst the bounds but are too cowardly to do so

Immortality is what we must fear - year after year: frost, spring zephyrs summer-rains

Interminable, never reach its end, but soon, soon, winter will return;

The losses will mount, the harvest moon appears, seen again through tears.