The Silent Love Song of Marina Abramovic
I Walked An Hundred, Hundred-Thousand Steps,
To give you the good-bye I could not speak.
Atop the Great Wall, you and I, Opposites,
Ascending and Descending,
For six-thousand-five-hundred-and-eighty-five miles
(and a half)…
Have met
To say
Good-Bye,
But I could not speak it,
And all
My arms, my lips, my body
Could say to you, was: 'Please, don't go!
Don't go! It isn't time
to say Good-Bye!'
And then, today, I sit, and offer
Sixty seconds of sweet silence,
For every one of a soft procession of faces...
Only my breath, my breath and my softness
(Beneath the stone)
An almost smile for this one,
And an almost penetrating look for that…
That one, I could almost read…
And then, my breath is gone!
YOU!
And Have You come from worlds away, to taunt me, like an errant ghost? Or to tell me
…something?
I would shake! (If I was a woman who shook) but instead,
I spread the broad red of my dress, about to sit down…
…Oh… how ODD… I AM sitting down…
And Hope, or Sorrow, or Loss, Brims,
And I cannot hold back the crystalline drops
That will only shatter
Against the hard red of my dress – is it blood? Or is it Roses?
And… Against my will, I stretch to you my hands,
And… The curve in my back is still supple,
And… I take your Old hands, grown old, and known of old.
How to embrace across a TABLE? I cry out to myself,
And so,
I do not.
But every vibrating atom of me yearns for you!
I would shake! (If I could)
You see, I was not the One Who Wanted To Say Good-Bye!
And now you’re here! And…
It’s Good-Bye, again, isn’t it?
And now, I will shake! (I am not a woman who shakes)
And… Weep!
O! Hands!
Receive! These tender jewels ere they reach
The welcoming red, the hard red, the shattering-my-dreams-again-today red,
And I must return to the soft procession of faces,
Who now know everything…
Just...
Everything… but… WHY?
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