Loss | The Poetry Foundation

There’s a trail uphill that leads somewhere.

After reading just a few lines written in an old dead tongue

I have to head for that hill

wearing canvas shoes made from a gray satchel.

Somewhere a lost object is in a hurry to be found.

There’s a trail uphill that leads somewhere.

The text on the next page of a book is waiting

and someone is listening there, having brought a dead tongue to life.

With the crunch of dead leaves underfoot

the sunlight lingering on my worn clothes,

I sense that my heart is growing several times wider.

That object must be somewhere inside.

An unfamiliar grasshopper jumps, startled by a sneeze

provoked by the spicy odor of dry grass or fodder.

The first day is colder than the thirty-first,

yet the lost object is still nowhere around.

There’s a trail uphill that leads somewhere.

At home, some elder's first death anniversary awaits.

Behind me someone is pestering my heart,

saying: there, there, or there,

but to me it's full of reconciliation; there’s nothing there.

Ultimately, I suppose, that lost object will likewise be named in a dead tongue.