Lucy Kaplansky
"Still Life"


Sadness is a little boy looking
Out the window high above the city,
Counting statues of people on the buildings,
Thinking that the people are forever,

He wants his father to be a statue,
On the rooftop of his fatherless home,
So that he can always see him,
So that he will never leave him,

Late at night in the darkness of his dreaming,
His father's words fall down in a rainstorm,
And the words become hands that will guide him,
Through his life in the world just beginning.


You cannot live in bronze or stone,
Make your life in flesh and bone.


Stranded is a man no longer searching
For the life he had hoped for and imagined
Courting fear instead of a woman,
Holding sorrow as his only companion

Counting days like his money in the markets,
And watching life from the window in his office,
Maybe one day I'll have the courage,
Maybe one day I'll sail across the ocean.

But I feel safe in the light of my computer,
This is how I choose to live,
Fixed in stone a man will wither,
Running waters are the life of the river.

You cannot live in bronze or stone,
Make your life in flesh and bone
Remember me...

Frightened is an old man limping
Through the park on a dark December day,
He stands frozen at the base of a statue,
And he hopes for a warm hand to help him,

Tonight he will dream that he is flying,
Over banks of a river he remembers
His father's voice will echo all around him,
His father's hands will hold him in the sky,

Now I can sail across the ocean,
Now I will sail across the ocean,
Now I am sailing across the ocean.

I cannot live in bronze or stone,
I must live as flesh and bone.