Sworn to silence, words stolen
By a sullen gestapo of love.

A lone echo trapped in a glass jar.
The mille-tendernesses of a world

Banished, sand banks roll swiftly
Into the deep with insurmountable waves

Controlled by the tidal launches
Of marsh-like moons. A lizard eats ash

As if the sustenance of an intrepid ant
lies beneath the surface of timbers.

Human singe, mosquitoes bite the pallid
Palm fronds of the skin of an irreverant Sunday

Walking through a foggy field of gunfire quakes
Cutting the air as I drove down the back road away.

A cracked glass table where words were once written.
Syllables smoked in your garden where nothing grows.

Only ashes. Evidence of a habit washed by rain.
More foul than the usual dreary weather

He spoke only once with the platitudes
Of his existence. Ivy grew as a weed

About us. There we died, there in silence.
More ash beside unused wellies, our galoshes of undertow.

A snail slides unglued to its rough surface.
A bird chirps an unheard familiar song.

Forgotten silencer. Only one bullet
I bite quietly. Nothing left to say,

To wipe clean. Only torn respites of grief
Slate roofs, dislodged asphalt

The cackle of a flightless bird
Never confessing its love

For snowdrifts, the burdensome ice.
Watching comely seasons thawing before us

As if a film, time-lapsed, imperial subjects.
The ending, making sense of Switzerland,

Climbing wearily the jungfraujoch
A high train to nowhere unraveling

The petty poetic earth below us. Overhead
The teetering of a small helicopter in a stillborn air.

A swarm still searching for you, I am here,
Awaiting this bon-voyage of ancient dreams,

Buildings erect as tombstones,
All creatures of oblivion passing by

The sun’s mercurial orange,
Our preparedness for goodnight.

MARINA GIPPS

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bon-voyage-of-dreams-or-making-sense-of-switzerland/