Now when I go up, the wind pulls me
to go up higher. I go up
to breathe the air that fills my lungs,
and the wind whispers its secrets into my ears,
secrets I still hear.
If I go even higher, it is the way
a bird soars higher with its wings.
If I remember my childhood,
it is as if I am still running
in a plain I was in.
I run, and the wind runs with me.
What is it to have a memory, like a kite
flying in the heat of summer?
Try climbing the mountain
to reach the dusty plain on
the other side.
It is filled with excitement.
Sometimes I go to the plain,
and the plain is lonely. There the wind
greets me;
a man is walking with a bag of grass,
a man who nods his head in the sun;
there is the silhouette of a silent mountain
in the distance—or is it the horizon, like a thin line?
I don’t know about the memories; all
I know that sometimes
someone will pick up an old kite
of his childhood
and start flying it—that sits there
in his closet—like a sad bird asleep in its cage,
and that has left it there
because time caught up with us;
leaving us with memories of long ago.