THE YARD

A peaceful yard, silent. The sickly trees, sad,

far away in time. The smell of mould,

the lizard, the dry well, the pulleys. There

the lame boy comes out in the evening. At the other door,

across the way, the one-handed boy stands, looking afar.

They do not greet each other. They clench their teeth. They want to

forget

the killed bird they had buried together one evening when

the one still had his leg and the other hand,

and the straw chair near the rose—bush

was warm with the sun, with nobody sitting there,

and everything was pointless, sad, immobile,

and therefore immoral, in a city

of long ago, naively nailed to the future.