The Moya View

To Know Guernica Is to Fall

Image credit; Guernica by Pablo Picasso.

 

He saw Guernica in front of him

and knew what falling was in all 

its gray grace and white horror.

 

“Jesus, how they huddle together 

like close trees in a savage wind,”

he thought, noticing his phlegm

falling into the acid of his stomach.

 

By the time he left the museum

dusk was starting to fall into night

and the city was plunging into its 

ritual of feasting and sleeping.

 

“Things fall, break apart,” he shrugged.

“Why am I not surprised by that?

Such an unoriginal thought!”

 

It had been over sixty years since

he didn’t feel the shattering winds inside,

the pain dripping drop by drop, drop.

 

The time without it lived in the fog,

It was unknowable, ununderstanable.

Eighty years he hovered in that wind.

 

At home, he noticed the pine needles

had fallen and the crows were cawing.

The lilacs along the slippery walk had

opened up their black buds to night.

Frost was breaking over the grass and

the banks of the creek had crusted.

 

The wind leaned against his body,

his limbs and stiffly against his legs.

He stumbled, almost falling, into his house. 

 

The hourly sound of pine cones thudding

on the roof left him irritated, sleepless.

 

He wished then dreamt of a place

quiet, still and where he didn’t hover,

a field of trees where he was

the only unbroken and still shiny one—

the one not falling, shredding to dust.  

 

 


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Comments

2 responses to “To Know Guernica Is to Fall”

  1. caroline46 Avatar

    Are lilac buds black?

  2. JONATHAN MOYA Avatar

    When they bloom they are for a few days

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