It was your appearance so sudden and unexpected
That stopped my clumsy digging in the front-yard,
With that virgin plough of mine gently laid
On the ground, for you did catch me off guard

Like a thief to snatch and steal my heart
With the agility of your body’s every lively part,
Tempting me to reach out my tentative arm
With no intention at all to do you any harm,

Only to find that such was the living fear
You must have felt like your own fate to meet
That all you tried to do was desperately disappear,
Leaving behind a part of you as a piece of dead meat.

I had to let you go before I could say how sorry,
How sorry I was to have made you pay that cruel price
For my careless curiosity fit for a stupid story,
Like a Shylock or a Grim Reaper demanding a sacrifice.

Totally I forgot you were a lizard
Who could do tricks with your tail
Like the wand of a wizard
From some old folks’ fairy-tale.

I picked up that painful part
Of yours to bury it in the ground,
While mine has not yet found
Anywhere to be buried but my heart.

Some pain is a kind of pain
The loss of which is another pain
You’d try to lose all in vain,
Like a thing that grows back again,

As we all have ours to abandon,
As if trading or begging for a pardon,
To move on, to live on,
Yet holding on and still hanging on...