The mourning

There is a woman on the island who mourns for her husband
and cannot stop mourning in the time we have set for her.
She needs a psychologist so we say
but she cannot go to the mainland for help,

she cannot cross the sea as she is too depressed
and we all think this is crazy, she is crazy
for not getting her act together by now and crying
all the time. And we tell her all we know about grieving.

And we feel so much better
about our own heroic distances from the death
and how we move on in spite of our losses
and keeping up the spirit
although the real spirits better be absent.

We are still here
as no one has gone to the mainland as well;
for whatever reason we can think off we are reluctant
and we mourn in our ways without knowing we do.

We mourn as we water
the already dead plants in the garden,
as we go about our lives in a slower pace
as we hear ferry whistles and the sound
of geese flying over, without us longing
to go away too.
We are too dead to mourn well.

The portrait painter

When word was out
that he, the village artist,
was making another portrait
no one dared to see it
as they expected to drop dead at first glance
as they knew others had died in admiration
just by watching his art,
which they burnt.

So they shut his cabin
locked the windows and doors
with him inside
and it became quiet,
all was good
and grass overgrew the dwelling.
The cabin rotted,
the village slowly vanished.

Years after the last villager had died
a little girl found her way in the cabin,
stepped over the skeleton
drawn as she was to the painting
and she took it outside
where no one ever expected
such beauty to be found
in such a derilict place.

The colours that never saw daylight
started to live,
the immortal face they saw
was that of a young man,
the artist himself, as he had been,
while he was being buried alive
by the people
who were for ever faceless.