The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 26

It is as if death is unappeased in this place
Or that beauty has died at the hand of anger.
Young man:
Now you’re are talking in riddles
Or rambling with words the way we ramble
This countryside day and night.
The twisting roads have twisted your mind
You were reluctant to come to this place
But insisted that we come to this place
You’re a contradiction to yourself
As much as you are to me.
Old man:
Old men have prerogatives which young men do not.
If I twist and turn it is because of a memory
Which can never rest easy in my heart. Nor is my mind
Better equipped to handle it. Say what you will
About my state yet even though I don’t want to be here
This is where I must be.
Young man:
Must be, must be
What must be for the two of us
Travelling these roads and seeking shelter?
Old man:
I’m looking for more than shelter
I’m looking for an answer to a vision
That has troubled me for twenty years
Which I hope will be resolved this night
A face, neither male nor female, a face of tragic androgenic beauty, stylized, slowly appears
out of the green and brown shrubbery, holds there a few seconds, then slowly disappears
again back into it again
Old man:
There! Did you see it?
Young man: