Poetry / George Wallace

 

I have lived with dreams so long I am practically dream myself; now a trader on the old silk road, now a horseman on the Mongolian plain, cooking up rice in a pot; now a shepherd boy with a goat at the end of a rope, part goat himself after all these years, wise to the ways of men, tethered to men, innocent beyond the ordinary measures of men, and wishing he was a man of means; a soldier perhaps, a holy con-man with a basket full of snakes and a clarinet, impressing villagers far and wide; wishing he was a rich man walking crookedly through city streets, carrying a rich man’s cane in one hand and his sex in the other, offering small coins to street children, liberally, orphans and urchins to left and to right; and who is to stop him, who stops any man just short of seventy from giving away the things he can no longer possess, to those who can use them most; while holding fast to his dignity, and weeping inside when he sees a pretty peasant girl on cobblestones, with skin the color of Bulgarian wheat and goat-eyes for every man in the market square except him, calling out the price of olive oil.