written By
My grandfather’s hand was a leaving song;
it was cold, like my mother’s kitchen
when the utensils languished in idleness.
Lines ran through it like a crumbling labyrinth,
a million slanting roots of plants and vegetables,
which he caressed and spat on open wounds,
and wounded souls during his hay days,
when he was the masses’ healer, their hero.
He looked at me, squeezed my hand;
his voice stumbled as a death note to me.
My son, I know you are of a decent mind
and acute mindfulness grows in you
like tulips springing under a moonlight;
I feel the tingling of your veins, your nerves,
the conscious sprouting of the buds of maturity,
like a hibiscus planted on a damp soil
in my father’s garden where blood was oil.
But before you do anything, think well.
If soldiers march in here and chop off your head
will you still have a head on your shoulders?
If your enemies cut off your nose from your face,
will you have another face on your head?
If you die, will you still be alive?
If your body dissolves like a pillar of clothes
under the battering of rain and thunder,
with which body will you live into eternity?
You must ask yourself if you have another life
beyond the life you have now, beyond this life
Is there something else for you to fall on?
Is there life beyond life or death beyond death?
The life you live may not be clear to you now
and there may be another death beyond this dying.
If you can answer these questions, my son,
you will be able to decide with wisdom
how best to live your life without a body,
to know the gravity of death that conquers desires,
or the life that conquers another life.
Everything comes in a pack; my son,
but be careful with the way you unwrap yours
lest you poke into it with your gliding fingers.
There’s no time better than the present,
though it’s a gift from the past, taken into the future.
You may be facing situations mightier than confidence,
may your heart inform you that you need common sense.
Watch your steps, my son; the future is eternal.
I saw his eyes catching fire like autumn leaves,
and his body echoing the drones of his war days.
My grandfather’s right hand shook.
as he spoke to me through his body,
leaving me to wonder how his hand grew to a tree
and I spent half of my life climbing to its summit.
