Reading the Hands
Written for Haidi.
Hands, well
These are hands
Here are hands
Are you looking at the hands?
Look at the
l i n e s
See that? Fascinating
Look at the hands
Look at the life line
Stretching long all the way across the palm
See the hands of the children
We had hands like that once
Small and smooth
If you pinch the skin, it falls back in place like
Raindrops in a bucket
Our skin sinks
Like
The wet sand on the beach, falling
Into itself
Look at the nails!
They're bitten, aren't they? They
Usually are. Ours
Are cracked
And cloudy
And
Old
Oh, hands
Hands, well
We see enough hands, don't we?
Not only children's hands
Not usually children's hands
Look at the hands!
See those lifelines
Getting
l o n g e r
or
s h o r t e r
Every day
Our hands stay the same
Old hands
Wrinkled hands with spots
Discoloured hands with the funny pink scars
We wonder how we got them
Their hands change, every day, every moment
Changing
Look at their hands!
Oh, what pretty hands!
Look at the girls dancing, the fellows
Playing!
They're our girls and our fellows
With their fine dark hands
Fine smooth dark hands
With kissed finger-tips
Not our kisses.
But there are other hands
Those girls, those fellows who
Aren't ours.
Look at their hands!
Nervous hands.
Those girls don't trust us
They let their hands tremble in our old ones
Those fellows wouldn't play for us
Watch their hands moving
From pockets to
Belts to
Lips to
Hair to
Sides
They touch their glasses or their watches
These fellows are silly
To be
Frightened of old hands
Look at the hands!
Dreadful hands covered in dark words
Pretty hands with bright futures
Ugly hands someone ought to caress
Soft hands that need work
Bleeding hands that are tired of it
Oh, hands
They none of them have hands like ours
But when you read the hands
You should expect that
Once an old man came
With old hands
Old hands
Hands with yellow stains
Perhaps from pulling weeds
Perhaps from cigarettes
Perhaps from dying
You wonder
He had spots and wrinkles and scars
His hands were grey
Just like ours
His hands said
DANCE
DANCE
DANCE
Take up piano, we almost told him
Let your hands dance
Your hands want to dance
Play waltzes and sonatas
Dance on an ivory floor
But instead, we told him
Fortune
Your hands predict a fortune
You must accept the next business proposition
Offered to you
And you will have fortune
He smiled
They don't want to hear about something that will
Cost them money
They want money
So do we
And he wasn't one of ours
Why waste readings?
But we were sorry for his hands,
Weren't we?
Yes, we were sorry
For those old hands
But, hands,
Well, hands
Hands, oh
Look at the hands!
Small hands
White hands
Black hands
Yellow hands
Hard hands
Broken hands
Here are hands
These are hands
Are you looking at the lines?
Look at the
h a n d s
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