Brockengespenst Sieve Bonaiuti

Brockengespenst, or mountain spectre

Unchanging, the silence stands on the mountains Colourful things and thoughts tap on your forehead You walk and feel the air tighten around your teeth.

Twenty years behind you of wandering, of closing your eyes before the slow ending of the world. The fog covers memories, Covers words, covers yearnings, covers fears.

Blow away your hair, here silence stands and watches.

How heavy all those years are, how much heavier those that still wait, You move a foot and feel the future echoing beneath, an unknown name You will belong to.

Here, the mountains hold time between their peaks and show That nothing happens if nothing changes. An eternity is carried between cracks of rock and darkness, between cold, moss, cloud and bone.

But are you nothing here?

Move your feet a step more, let those stones crumble down and know that it is you that brought a sound, you that are here, changing in a breath between past and future,

You that are life reflecting and haunted.

Look up with your small eyes, see in the fog a shadow that looks back, light around his head like a star, Like a circle of colourful things and thoughts: a giant or a ghost, walking on silence’s shoulders.

Move a hand, the giant moves his, yourself made again before you: This earth notices your presence, You are alive and you are here and you are now,

not a named loneliness of skin, but light stepping on sky.

SIEVE BONAIUTI