The Making Of Ezro

I slid unwelcome into this world,

unbroken, but battered by the disappointment

of those to whom I was delivered.

I scrambled above their unhappiness

and learned to believe.

I found a place to stand,

and kept moving.

I had one man’s truth, and flung it

like a stone at this world.

I cried in the moonlight beside

damp fields. I was a young man,

and heard the midnight dogs of your

towns as if they were monastery bells.

You cannot imagine how lovely your world

looked from the outside, how moved I was

to hear radios playing in the dusk.

My ignorance was immense. The weight

of my tiny life made me a bowed spectacle.

Your libraries were sanctuaries, a refuge

from the puzzle. I let myself go too far

beyond what you could make the effort to

understand. I knew I was a reminder of

something, shambling among you, dirty because

clean was your world. You yanked your children

around me on the sidewalks, invented

your own strange versions of my journey.

But your children never forgot me.

My message was how far I had traveled,

how far I would travel still,

that a man could so believe that he could

wander so long with the truth snaking through

all manner of transformations in his

dull, plodding heart, and slithering so

slowly toward his waiting tongue.