Shadow

If the poet's ego did not
drown out the words,
we could be the echo of hidden truths.
We could whisper
in the ear of the one who
hears verses of love, cries of rebellion,
raw whispers,
the pulse of life---
the one beside us
whom we ignore.

If the poet's ego did not
insist on perfecting the unfinished,
we could flood an isolated, fractured universe with words.
We would give voice to
the one who falls silent
because solitude has claimed him,
we would honour the coward's daily war
of standing in a world without contours.

If the poet's ego did not
silence us,
we could be a fragment of a world
that simply needs us as voice and witness to its breath.
We could belong to a moving whole
instead of haunting our own emptiness.

A world that refuses to think calls out for us,
yet we bow before our own shadow.