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By Ismail Hamalaw
A little boy is staring at me,
wearing a small hat.
A little girl is staring at me too.
Maybe she is his sister.
Deep blue eyes looking at me,
looking at my loneliness, smiling.
Hi, to you, lovely kid.
Hi, to your kindness, to your smile.
The underground swallows me,
me with my old long overcoat.
Don’t get me wrong-
It isn’t overcoat of Akaky Akakievich,
the protagonist of Nikolai Gogol’s novel, no.
No, it is only my overcoat,
the overcoat of a cynical man without any choices.
I am sitting opposite these two lovely children.
I am sitting there with a long face like an old horse,
like a tired horse.
The small cute girl is staring at me.
She is laughing at me.
She is laughing from her heart.
She is laughing at me because she knows
there is no place for an old horse in the London underground.
I see the girl holding her hands to her ears-
she doesn’t want to hear the noise of the train.
The clamour of the underground disturbs her,
makes her nervous.
Horses are used to everyday clamour.
They are used to light.
They are used to bitterness.
They are used to emptiness.
I get out from the stomach of this dragon.
I want to vanish in the wave of the underground crew
but I see a horse in front of me-
I can see him passing through this deep basement,
this underground.
I can see the horse pass through this huge, unknown crew,
but, unfortunately, nobody can see it except for me.
Nobody can feel it
Nobody can smell it
Oh, I remember my self,
I remember how old I am,
old as an old horse, as a sad horse.
London – 16.02.2017