Manasseh

A jar with a familiar chequered lid

has sat on the desk to become a bid

How long will it remain untouched?

How long will it remain sealed?

Wondering whether its content

will ever recover so to ferment

whether amidst the pain and strife

the Past could be brought back to life

The dryness of its obsolete state

preserving what it used to create

like a loving memory graved in one’s mind

playing time and again to unwind

Could goodness from the past

live on so its brokenness to outlast

when in a dark cupboard kept away

so to be resurrected one day

But what kind of nature, when in oblivion,

could be reduced to a lifeless phenomenon?

Manasseh will recover its essence eventually

a revived sourdough starter so to be

while personally forgetting is an impossibility

I cannot help but ask about you and me

NDLR: L'auteure de ce poème médite à partir d'un pot de levain laissé à l'abandon sur la possibilité des choses du passé à renaître de leurs cendres.