He was always there

He was always there

His friendship could not be bought,

as little as you can buy fresh air.

He survived everything like a tree over the years

He upheld the fog, the flickering of the sun,

and the long nights in his branches.

He would call late and ask, how are you?

without saying his name.

His reassuring voice would whisper like the wind:

Calm down, do not worry, everything will be fine

He could feel my tiredness, my worries

and my pain without me having to tell.

He was ill for years, but I only thought about myself, 

my own difficulties and my own loss.

He had known about “in vain”, became unable

to work or devote time for personal friendship.

He could only just carry the night, the fog

and the long-lasting rain, which he wore

like a dark heavy cloak, in utter silence.

 

Then I waited in vain for his calls

and wondered about his quiet way of dying.

People who walked with him

never noticed his illness. Why

bother about the crown and the roots

of others? He was there, the tall stem, his hands,

the protective branches.

Everything was still there.

All that we remembered,

the beauty of a colourful autumn,                                                                               as the possibility of a new spring.

Nobody knew he was losing blood.

His amber skin still looked healthy enough,

but the resin slowly dripped from the cracked tree bark.

Only the paper-thin skin of his hands

showed signs of an increasing transparency

compared to that of a young birch tree in spring

where on delicate easy-to-find branches nestle the young birds,

ready for an easy featherless escape.

I often flew away from him, uninterested, carelessly.

I never found out the cause of his illness, 

a man still young in the tangle of his thought.

Threatened by storms, he still resisted;

his roots, however, slowly narrowed.

The breathlessness of his heart was a result

of not being understood for years.

His ability to maintain friendships

was as unsuccessful as clinging to life with dying roots.

But he tried, in the rush and hush of the world,

in spite of more and more restrictions.

His friends expected this or that from him.

They took advantage, even though

they pretended to love him.

But I saw no hope for him anymore.

So many others died around him

Each one involved with their own battle, 

sucked deep into a war of venules and capillaries

and unsuccessful exchanges of intracellular fluids

underneath the increasing moss.

 

A tree needs effective veins to pump its sap

deep into the hidden network of roots and ramification.

Our friendship died in the lack of this attempt.

The fear of losing narrowed his heart.

If you cut out the crown, split the trunk and cut off branches, then 

a tree will not survive.

But why think about trees, but not talk about a human being, a dying man?

Sometimes I wanted to have been there, when he gave up, 

before his irrevocable fall, that made him disappear, to wherever.

But then again, I wanted to see him fall like a man, witness

his courage until his last breath.