The Tramp

 

 (A lone voice whispers)

I was dirt poor when I was born many moons ago

I the now blind man speaking to you

One of my new silent audience  

  

Who I can feel that you've survived watching and listening nearby

Everywhere I go

Now just listen as I continue

I came into this world naked and small without a suitcase of money gold or any forms of riches

A big house or even a flash car

I always expected when my time was due

I'd take that same familiar road North

The one invisible to your human eyes but a shimmering road in this half-light

I still see so well

I always knew I'd walk proudly for even though your eyes might only see strands of my darkness and cheap rags

Those sad symbols of degradation that some in society use to see and judge whilst raising hell

For when my time was eventually called and my flesh and blood ultimately fell

Corrupted and maimed continuously by the lice and vermin of lamentations

Heralded into life by outrageous curses

Cheap lies and wicked spells

I saw with my own semi-darkened illuminated eyes

My greatest stories reborn in all who truly knew me as they still once breathed and stood tall

Tales of strength compassion and endurance

Hope empathy and kindness

Oh how I smiled when I swam that final nautical mile to the Silver City

Under the bluest of all skies

My immortal lines of never judge a book by its cover

Or the many beautiful chapters hiding inside its jacket might never recover

For they might just be an old heartbroken lover struck down in their full glory by life

A deserted husband or abandoned lonely wife

A lonely brother or sister

Lost and wandering looking to life to re- kiss her

All just searching for new reasons to mend old tainted wounds

Linked to severe trauma relived in countless internal rooms

Who might just need an encouraging hand

To help release them from unwanted friends hiding in deep purple emotional balloons

Those lines above I once said to the many spirits who gathered at my passing at Manoir de Ban

In Switzerland

On December 25  

1977

Will always echo into eternity forever in heaven

I might have been dirt poor when I was born but I always knew I would swim home rich

For I was never a tramp

And now will always be a reborn soul whose ephemeral translucent skin no longer itches

Like so many of those still alive who willingly sell their souls for cheap riches

I may have once pushed a trolley full of junk before you

But to me

I'm still the richest man in the whole goddam Galaxy

Just once tasked with struggling there on Earth in temporary agony

But deep down inside something used to whisper that soon, I'd be reborn to stand valiantly

To then wander free like a returning soul stepping off the old boat and entering smiling with a new passport

Into Gods Eternal Country

And then the lone voice vanished as though called back by powerful representatives

Hiding in the ether

Those who speak in broken languages through the many hidden frequencies

In-between the silence

I sometimes hear in random early morning realities

Conjured by a strange form of medieval alchemy

Who pass me by like a fast-flowing breeze

Speaking about their lives and all its many strands of happiness and sad entwined tragedies

Copyright John Duffy