TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

11:45 AM
Posted by jodi rose

The Bridges

Wind blows the ribbon tighter before the bridges.
The sky grated the deepest blue
along the pilings.
Here and there our shadows
change places in the light.
Pont Mirabeau...Waterloo Bridge...
How can the names bear
carrying the nameless?
Moved by the lost ones
that faith could not carry,
the drums awaken in the river.
All bridges are lonely.
And fame is just as dangerous for them
as for us, though we think
we feel the tread of stars
on our shoulders.
Yet no dream arches
over the slope of our mortality.
It's better to live for the riverbanks,
crossing from one to the other,
watching all day for the chosen one
to cut the ribbon.
For he reaches the sun shears
wrapped in fog; and should the light blind him,
the fog will cushion his fall.

Ingeborg Bachmann