Aldas Kruminis

Seashore spills
towards the dunes of sand,
shares your sadness
and hunger

for change.

 

Water washes
your past steps
etched on broken ground
as you walk towards the stars.

 

The sun isn’t always there
but the path is open,
even if uncertain and unpaved.

 

Tides ebb and flow,

coast along

but the path is always there,

waiting to be mapped.

Time is running out, the sand has trickled down

the funnel made of glass. He watches the grains

settle in smooth heaps like a desert after a storm.

Time has passed. It is done; the midnight has come.

 

Fear dissolves and the world stops; your thoughts

quiet and you pause to breathe; that time has come.

Incurable passage of time drags you with

its silent heavy steps into tomorrow.

 

But now tomorrow is today and you have to rise;

that weight of heavy steel against your hip asks for

warmth of blood, for the act of a secret plot.

 

Cold murder wrought on a cold night, but with warm

hands and a beating heart. That steel

makes you God; the punisher, unlawful

and executor, wrongful. A God not in law

 

but in opportunity. You take your hat,

squeeze yourself into a coat

and brave the snowy night.

 

Your footprints mark the fresh-fallen snow

in a trail of murder on this quiet night.

 

You never noticed, but the streetlights

follow your way there, to the house

with a red door and frost-bitten windows.

 

There sits the sinner. You dig out

the cold metal from your pocket

and point.

Born into death,
already I have failed.

Death’s claws brush my cheek,
cold air grips my neck.

I don’t reach for a grave
but a tombstone bears my name.

Fear or courage, I will pass,
fade with the past.

By fame or forgetfulness
I will drown in the ground.

Time will erase my marks,
void my life of meaning.

I have failed already, buried
under a temporary life.