English Language and Literature

English Language and Literature

Sometimes at mid noon
And at midnight
I cry out in anguish
My friends never know what ails me
My wife’s sure that I am spooked
My children are scared of me
But no one knows what’s wrong with me.

For it is at midnight and mid noon
That my constant companion for the day and night
Vanishes, not to be seen
He follows me everywhere
Even where my friends cannot
He eats, drinks and walks with me
He sleeps with me and wakes up by my side.

Oh yes, he is my shadow
My constant trailer
My outline in different scales and shapes
Filled with darkness of different hue
Often he is so small that I cannot see him
And at times he is so big that
I see only a part of him

He is real funny too
He changes his dark shade a hundred times
His outline twists and twirls
He is diagonal and sometimes only a line
Often when I know he is there,
He is only a half, the other
Half cut by brilliance, his foe

To begin with I never saw him
I remember my friends telling me
Not to look at my shadow in the night
Who they told me is only evil
Then I did tricks with my shadow
I moved my hands and fingers
To make funny shades on the wall

I was beginning to notice my companion
Often he plays pranks on me
My friends sometimes call me handsome
My wife said that often, that was before I married her
And here, this dark ruffian following me
Dances in ugly shapes and hideous silhouette
And calls me ugly and shapeless and dark

And I tried to become handsome in the eyes of all
And in the outlines of my shadow.
I ate only once a day and went to a gym
I dyed my hair, and grew a Bulganin beard
I cut my clothes at a fashionable angle
And got my shoes made to order
I sprayed a perfume sold by a footballer’s wife

My wife said that my hair looked younger
My friends said that my beard was mature
My son said that my trousers were outlandish
My daughter said that I reminded her of Alladin’s gene
I didn’t care, for I thought that my friend in the mirror
Looked...

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