Tuesday, November 17, 2009

You can't see the future with tears in your eyes

She grabs my hands
I can feel her cold palm in mine
We've been here for about an hour now
We haven't said a word
I look into her eyes
Like I've done countless times before
and in them, I see something essential to my survival
She doesn't complement, No, she completes me
a peculiar sum, one plus one equals one

The train pulls up
I can feel her grip tighter
tears roll down her eyes
down mine
There's no good way to say goodbye
I'd rather time froze
forever
.... you can't see the future with tears in your eyes

Alone.

Alone, I stand on the concourse
as she pulls away
into the arms of the horizon
... if you see the future, ask it if I'm there.


Julian Obubo. Nov 2009

I've been getting a lot of visitors from Denmark checking out this particular poem, can any of you Danish visitors please tell me why this poem is so popular. Thanks

10 comments:

evelyn.n.alfred said...

I love how this poem was inspired by that Navajo quote Maxwell twittered about. Cool beans!

Unknown said...

Yeah, I absolutely loved that quote, it's been in my head since. I had to elaborate on it..

Anonymous said...

I love this. This reminded me of why I read poetry. Keep writing!

-Ann

Model Minority said...

Wow.

This is good. Reminded me of my teary goodbuys on Amtrak Platforms.

~R

Buff said...

Mr Obubo, I felt this a man trying 2 suspend the one thing that is beyond us; time.
I love the feeling of incertitude you evoke at the end of your poem and how it overlap with the title,
but more than anything else this I love the irony at work in this paradox of your creation:
"a peculiar sum, one plus one equals one".
A true romantic you are kind laurete we applaud you~

Unknown said...

Im from Denmark
The Reason why there are so many Danes who often look at it, because there is one phrase in it, everyone knows
"You Can't see the future with tears in your eyes"

Anonymous said...

Im from Denmark too.
My reason to check out this poem, was that the phrase, "you can't see the future with tears in your eyes", is all over facebook. And i thought, it maybe was a song, or something like that, so i decided to check out the google search results, and this one looked interresting, so i clicked.
I know my english isn't that good, but i hope you understand.

Anonymous said...

I'm danish as well, and the reason that I googled this beautiful and meaningful sentence was that I saw it used in a danish home makeover-show on tv a few weeks ago. This young guy had lost his mother, and the sentence helped him overcome his fears and move on with his life despite the loss of his mother. The show is called "Velkommen Hjem" and means "welcome home" if you want to google it.

Thanks a lot for posting this poem, it is absolutely beautiful.

Regards from Dennmark.

Celeste Cristina said...

The saying does attract a lot of people cause we´ve all heard it a few times here and there. the version that I´ve heard and was really attracted to is in spanish and it goes like this: "Si lloras porque has perdido el sol, tus lagrimas no te dejaran ver las estrellas" which means If you cry because you´ve lost the sun, your tears won´t let you see the stars...but i really like you´re poem!

Anonymous said...

I´m from Denmark too
This says more than a thousand words.
Í aboslutely love it, and the first time I heard of it was in that show too.
i've got it tatoed on my shoelder, because i need a reminder, that you've got to look forward, or else your live will never go on, if you have been through many tough things in life...