The world that would have gone on without me

bargained and clattered


and I walked where I wanted, free of the pretense of family now,

belonging to no one


back to the place where he’d bent and written in the dust.

(He was a man among men – he knew not to look at them)



Whatever he’d scribbled in the dust wasn’t there anymore,

but he was


standing with his friends in the shade of the temple wall.