Response to Wislawa Szymborska’s “Receiver”

JINGLE

Time is given to several addictions
It’s not the same on two people’s walls
As darkness gathers,
So it suddenly disappears
Light too.
Life is a pendulum in oscillation
Moving gradually from easier to harder
The hands get stronger as they wave
Making it not different from genesis
If anyone can tell why the sky cries
Or why the heart bleeds
Then it would be easier,
To make sense of logic
The same power that moves a car
Burns the wheel
But this will is rooted in fear
Fenced by a thought of impossibilities
One is living forever
Another is knowing not a penniless day
But till we can hold the sun with our gaze,
We’d never truly understand time.

Victor Oyedele