THE TIME

Time only crosses its fingers for itself.
In our childhood, when it bulks at its tallest,
it puts a latch in our face
actually meant for death
and its sidekicks.

Sometimes it comes too soon
in the guise of love.

Sometimes it takes too long, then
that love no longer finds a palace
behind that little door, no treasure chamber, not even
a made bed, but

a cluttered broom closet
with a mop, a cobweb
and a panicked moth
still frantically
seeking the keyhole
in the stars.

Martijn Benders – from: Karavanserai, 2008, Nieuw Amsterdam Publishers.
Soon available in my collection ‘Tract of the Sun’.

*

THE OLD AGE

Grandma smiles like the Mona Lisa
but one without teeth.
She slides her curly teacups.
to cheat the time she has left
with an eary shell game
and everything she does has
an ingrained grace,

only visible to the dead,
for time she is only space
or name-count on paper, but Granny
hasn’t been here since she
forgot her visibility.

Who can blame her anymore,
everything shines:
the door,
the stairwell
and sometimes even she does,
on her bed that same bedspread
in which time trapped itself.

Martijn Benders – from: Karavanserai, 2008, Nieuw Amsterdam Publishers.
Soon available in my collection ‘Tract of the Sun’.