Friday, March 31, 2006

dearest readers. This poem is in my english textbook. it really spoke to me.
The Fifth sense

A 65-year-old Cypriot Greek shepherd, Nicolis Loizou, was wounded by security forces. He was challenged twice; wheb he fialed to answer, troops opened fire. A subsequent hospital examination showed that the man was deaf.

Lamps burn all night
Here, where people must be watched and seen,
And I, a shepherd, Nicolis Loizou,
Wish for the dark, for i have been
Sure-footed in the dark, but now my sight
Stumbles among these beds, scatterd white boulders,
As i lean towards my far slumbering house
With the night slumbering upon my shoulders.

My sight was always good,
Better than others. I could taste wine and bread
And name the field they spattered when the harvest
Broke. I could coil in the red
Scent of the fox out of a maze of wood
And grass. I could touch mist. I could touch breath
But of my sharp senses i had only four.
The fifth one pinned me to my death

The soldiers must have called
The word they needed: Halt, not hearing it,
I was thir failure, relaxed against the winter
Sky, the flag of their defeat.
With their five senses they could not have told
That I lacked one, and so they had to shoot.
They would fire at a rainbow if it had
A colour less than they were taught.

Christ said that one sheep
Was lost, the rest meant nothing anymore.
Here in this hospital, where others' breathing
Swngs like a lantern in the polished floor
And squeezes those who cannot sleep,
I see how precious each thing is, how dear,
For I may never touch, smell, taste or see
Again, because i could not hear

ahh.. how unfortunate.

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