Our time together playing games, chasing girls
|
- the names of which we could still recall,
|
One of whom, I had engaged, and who
|
As my lover had given me one child.
|
The Wanderer smiled, and said he envied
|
Me my happy home and family bliss,
|
And when I protested that it was not so,
|
He cut me short and began a tale
|
Meant to make me cherish all I had.
|
But I would not let him start his cant
|
Until I had laid my troubles out before him -
|
How city living was a mental drain,
|
How family life was dull and boring,
|
How children ate into a father’s soul,
|
How a job for life made life a job -
|
But my friend laughed and called me
|
A happy man searching for unhappy joy,
|
And as I disagreed, he began his tale
|
But I stopped him short with my all.
|
“While you were trapsing the world,
|
I was bettering myself the best I could.”
|
“Do not feel threatened” he replied
|
“travelling is not a life to envy.
|
If I were to live my youth again
|
I would not take the road to freedom -
|
For freedom is an ideal manufactured
|
By individuals shackled by their upbringing.”
|
As these words passed on top of mine,
|
I recalled the faces of his parents -
|
His patient, warm and endearing mother
|
And the father who adopted him as son.
|
For it was common knowledge as boys
|
That he did not know who his father was,
|
And thus half of him was a mystery -
|
Half of him was secret and unknown.
|
And now my interuption had silenced him,
|
He rose and said that he must go -
|
I pressed him for his address,
|
But he stated that he had no home.
|
I gave him my card and made him promise
|
That he would come and visit me soon.
|
The hottest summer of the century passed,
|
Autumn came as autumn always does -
|
The leaves lingered high until December
|
When the grey of winter finally closes in.
|
Cheered by the lights of Christmas,
|
New Year came, and a new decade too,
|
And with it floods and gales so severe
|
That thousands were cut-off, marooned;
|
Vaste tracts of land joined the ocean.
|
It was on the eve of Saint Valantine’s
|
With a howling storm ripping at the eaves
|
That there was a soft knock at my door.
|
It was the Wanderer!
|
