Knight

 

Like a knight of some old-fashioned book

I came to you from a remote country

I used words 

you never heard before

and you smiled

to make me understand

that you did not understand me

I had lived a life

where songs were finished in a sob

and I had remained 

a passer-by in the eyes of God

I had wandered too long

in landscapes 

of impossible loves

Beloved

I knew it 

long before I came 

life is but an endless poem

a noteless song

on the lips of a mute beggar

the streets used to recite 

some kind of prayer in the dark

way before I realized

that I was mortal

I feel like an old knight

Spanish by descent

and deprived of his windmills

and if I smile at you

the world will know a new dawn

even if you do not smile back

and  tell me abruptly

that a am too well-known

a stranger

Claude Lopez-Ginisty