[The photo is of the “Tree of Desire” sculpture, in Petrozavodsk, Russia. – Owen]

Nothing looks the way it is,
But everything’s as it should be;
Moments that you are not you,
You might just be a bit of me

Or I might be a bit of you.
I really do not know:
But I see longing everywhere,
Yes, everywhere I go.

Now, no one knows the way back home,
But few left leave their homes at all;
In the silence and the gloom
They sit, just past the narrow hall

That leads to where they really are.
I can but vaguely see:
Still, you’ll find longing everywhere,
Wherever you might be.

He’s tired of wrestling with his heart,
She’s stretched down to a wire;
The branches dark and bare upon
The black tree of desire

That people stare at every day.
They move, they stop, they go:
But they find longing everywhere,
As I’m sure that you know —
Yes, we find longing everywhere,
For that is how
We grow