Walter Hoelbling
Lessons - Two Poems

© 1998 by Walter Hoelbling and gangan books australia

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Lessons

I. skirting reality

coming to think of it

the first woman
to whom I ever
had been very close
must have been desperate
to claim a father
for her three-month child
as yet unborn

she came into my bed
   out of the blue
with fierce determination

the mission failed
   I was too cautious
and her rash parting
left me wondering
at her dismay

not until some months later
   when I saw her push the pram
did I become aware I had
   unwittingly
emerged fairly unscathed
from ancient battlegrounds
of social order

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II. death of innocence

we taught each other
to enjoy
a lingering kiss
   soft touches
      loving glances
the built-up tension unreleased
   but in a secret solitude
      at night
a yearning for fulfilment
   never to be granted
as we moved out of school
and into different lives

I saw you last
a few years after
   alarmed by news from mutual friends
two days before your death

you did not recognize me
   any more
as I stood terrified
besider your bed
in a secluded section
of the cancer ward

I had arrived too late

my loving stutter
already out of reach
your blindly searching gaze
passed on through me

it hurt
like nothing else before

I cried my grief out
in long sobbing nights
yet still not long enough
to heal the pain
nestling since then
   quietly
in thinly calloused
wrinkles of my heart

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E-mail walter.hoelbling@kfunigraz.ac.at