Poem: The empty chairs do not accuse!

By Arian Galdini

Hope does not close

when the room closes,

the room where the voice stayed on

like bread sliced thin

for hands that came,

for hands that were absent,

for hands that perhaps

had lost the way back to the table.

The empty chairs

do not accuse.

They stay there, quiet,

like old men who have watched a man

grow only when he no longer asks

for a witness

to his wound.

I fold the past

like a work-worn garment,

with the smell of years in the cloth,

and do not throw it away.

I leave it on memory’s back,

there where tired things

no longer command,

but learn to be silent.

I go out with no list of names,

with no waiting line,

without the noise

that gives emptiness

the name of fate.

On the table I place only the first word,

rough, warm,

like bread that does not ask

how many will sit down.

The table keeps no names.

It holds only a place.

Then one remains there,

where no one sees him,

with the door open,

and with that silence

that keeps a house standing

even when, inside it,

only the bread speaks.

Arian Galdini