A Poem from Zahrad

A Woman Cleaning Lentils

A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.
A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.
A green one, a black one, a green one, a black. A stone.
A lentil, a lentil, a stone, a lentil, a lentil, a word.
Suddenly a word. A lentil.
A lentil, a word, a word next to another word. A sentence.
A word, a word, a word, a nonsense speech.
Then an old song.
Then an old dream.
A life, another life, a hard life. A lentil. A life.
An easy life. A hard life, Why easy? Why hard?
Lives next to each other. A life. A word. A lentil.
A green one, a black one, a green one, a black one, pain.
A green song, a green lentil, a black one, a stone.
A lentil, a stone, a stone, a lentil.  

— Zahrad

[I found this poem over at Gretchen Joanna's today.  At first I didn't even read it through. I thought, "A silly poem. Hm." But I was drawn back somehow, and read it over several times. Something about it gets into the craw. There are associations in it that rumble around in the mind. A stone. A life. A word. Pain. The questions asked. The randomness of cleaning tiny things for dinner, and happening unexpectedly upon a thing that doesn't belong -- that's life, isn't it?]