The Sound of Footsteps
At night when the world sleeps
I hear the footsteps of people
Who walked with me for years.
With time they all drifted away far
I don’t know where nor do I care
They wouldn’t know
I don’t want to see them either
For I turned a new page
Filled with new faces I adore
Some smiling , some sad
For I took a new road
I swept it clean of the dry leaves
That carried images of the crumpling faces
Now lying in heaps on the road I left
They lost the address of the tree they came from
I fixed a new price for my life worth its value
The people who disappeared didn’t understand
Or couldn’t pay the price and moved away.
At night when the world sleeps
I hear the footsteps of people
Who walked with me for years.
I have travelled a long way
And reached now a green pasture
Lined with trees I planted
Where I lie on a bed of flower
Bathed by the new sun I discovered
The distant faces have gone pale
Because they can’t come under my sun
And have become contourless shadows
Their faces indistinct in the dark past
But in opaque moonless nights
When solitude hangs like a heavy mist
Spreading a veil of haze on everything
In the present and in the past
The featureless faces come alive
And the shadows walk
On the road I long left
But I hear their footsteps
As closely as I want to hear
For they carry the echo of my distant footsteps
Treading in the past to oblivion
I want them to come back
With their sound to break the loneliness
For me to build with the pieces
A bridge between now and then
Between what I have and what I lost
Between what I am and what I was.
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