by VON ZYRON P. ALIMORONG
There, across the sunless street,
a cat there stood and looks
ahead—
with irises bright,
like the skin of a sunset sky;
with whiskers long and thin,
like the softest brushstrokes of nature;
and in its little yawn I see the kindness of
the world enclosed within.
And there it stood for hours on end—
the firm cat does not mind the overcast—
over the grayish town where Death had marched
one day in nineteen-eighty two in the heated March.
A mouse had passed by it and it did not move its eyes;
the cat looks
ahead—
and waited
with patience divine
and hoped for the Kind and soldier-eyed Master
to return home.
The sun had burned him, the snow had frosted his hair,
the moon had grown twice as big,
and streets had cracked thrice as fast,
and the cat dared not to move.
Scattered the feline eyes at night,
hoping the Kind Master will return by the thousandth night.
Twitched the ears whenever a sound of a boot appears.
When the sun rises, the cat would calm itself
and sigh once more.
He waited for his master,
who left with ten other men
when Death came to collect a million more.
But near the end of his eighth life—
there, as he sat by his Master’s door,
only nine strangers came back home.
What is the use of one more life
if I cannot spend it with you? F
