IV

The universe is entirely remote.
While I sit here
and I'm writing these lines,
expanding with it,
even though I sit motionlessly
at my desk.
Every light comes to us too late.
We are looking at the stars
and we see what they were,
not what they are.
Perhaps they went out long ago.
Perhaps their light
he doesn't know yet,
that he has nowhere to arrive.
And when you left,
I saw you for a long time afterwards.
You
and what you used to be.
Just the light
that came from you
when you were still standing
kilometers away from me.
And when you came to me,
time bent around us,
as if we had found ourselves
near something so heavy
that even the clock
couldn't move its hands.
Weeks slipped by outside the window
and at my home
a single moment stretched into years.
One hour was a year.
One night a decade.
Why for all those years before you
fit into just a few sentences,
while one night with you
still has no end?
Between us was a road.
Not emptiness.
And in the end, an entire life
was crammed into a few months
that were given to us.
If it had come later,
maybe it would have hurt more,
Dad said.
How much later?
One night?
In ten years?
What else would have to happen
for those few months
to be allowed to be called life?
I am not saying it was enough.
Only that it happened.
That the calendar measured the length,
but forgot to weigh its mass.
How far away can a person be,
whose light still reaches
me?
And how short can time be,
yet still bear within itself
an entire life?
Will I know
that that person is no more?
Will I know
that the star has gone out?