Indrek Koff

waiting
waiting
I’m waiting
on you waiting
man thirsts for light
more light even more and more
into his glaringly whitewashed life
I am I am a man I’m waiting
waiting on you in the yellowish night-city dusk polluting the dark sky
when sleep won’t come and I don’t dare go out because
I don’t want to wake the other sleepers
and what will I say when they notice I’ve gone
I’m waiting on you in dreams I conjure your coming
come already come you know how dearly I need you
I’m waiting like on a letter of absolution
that’d thud into my mailbox
on a terrible third Thursday
when there’s not even hope
because the mail’s not delivered any days anymore
and there’s noone to forgive me my sins and
there’s even no sins any more
I’m waiting on you waiting for peace of silence
how much longer can I bear to wait any longer
patience stretches like rubber it does
but it’s already taut like a string
playing two and a half octaves sharp
and still I wait I’m
waiting on you
come I’m waiting

you don’t come
you do not come
you don’t show yourself in sunlight
don’t reach out yet
don’t guide me on life’s steady paths
and you don’t reveal yourself in shadow and
although sight can’t cut through cataracts to truly see
you should still be seeable
everywhere
but a blunted echo answers my call
co-me
co-me
co-mmmmme
and mute awareness tells me
you’re not coming
you’re not coming yet
you are not coming

searching for you
searching
I’m searching for you
I track you in unexpected radiance
I search where searching is done
but then I give up there’s no point
I leave purity beauty and love right there and
search even where searching’s not done
because suddenly I see – the usual place for searching
you couldn’t possibly be there
I search rage and the base of bitterness and I search in
oh-ho surprise and shame and humiliation and
the eyes of an ice-cream-eating kid with a happy summer Sunday-city expression
and you know even in pretty funny places like
behind bus-drivers’ grouchy gazes and
among documents greasy from the breast pockets of light-brown windbreakers
beneath the beer bottles of workmen ratcheting together rusty amusement parks
in the thong-strings of middle-aged mothers with their backs turned halfway
in the smell of dusty old books
that sometimes makes you sneeze and
each time reminds you of those childhood librarians
who never believed you had read through the whole stack you returned
with all my senses I’m searching for you and in every language I call
searching
searching
I’m searching for you

and I find
I find you
I find
you're far
hardly visible
facing away
but you’re facing
you don’t peek over your shoulder yet
don’t show any sign don’t vow don’t promise but
you won’t vanish again because you’ve been seen and
been seen into
I suppose that is your vow your light-promise
you radiate pain and clarity
I’m afraid and afraid no more
the age of small fears has ended and
begun is the age of big fears and
the age of delighting in big fears
and I drill into the boundlessness of your gaze and I know
here I will stay it’s that womb sought a lifetime into which I would return
and I see
I find you
I find

and you’ll come
you’ll come all the same
one day you will come
I might not be around waiting anymore
but it’ll make no real difference because
one day you’re sure to arrive
you’ve been awaited here in this place
and you’ll arrive unfailingly you will
maybe yet before my final-day closing ceremony
we don’t rush we don’t stall
there's as much time as needed
it’s just enough
you’ll arrive when it’s time to arrive
you’ll come you’ll touch me
your breath your voice your force
accompanies me guides
carries me through life and through
that next
the door of which before me may already be
cracked
because I dared
to wait
on you

you’re coming