time is the enemy time is the guide

Four Poems by Franz Wright:

Untitled

Will I always be eleven,
lonely in this house,
reading books
that are too hard for me,
in the long fatherless hours.
The terrible hours of the window,
the rain-light
on the page,
awaiting the letter,
the phone call,
still your strange elderly child.

Heaven

There is a heaven.

These sunflowers -- those dark, wind threshed
oaks --...

Heaven's all around you,

though getting there is hard:

it is death,
heaven.

But they are only words.

One in the Afternoon

Unemployed, you take a walk.
At an empty intersection
you stop to look both ways as you were taught.
An old delusion coming over you.
The wind blows through the leaves.

Metaphor

Then the point comes
when language decides
to start strangling itself
on its leash, make a break for it
or to turn on you --
no longer the mournful
appearing, intelligent and silent being who guided you
in a dark world.