Denial
She said it was a trial,
That I’d hear but wouldn’t know—
In this world I’m not a master,
So it’s silly for me to crow.
My ego brought on disaster:
She loathed me, I never knew;
So now I lie only with my dear—Denial.
The end rhyme scheme follows Frances Darwin Cornford’s poem, “The True Evil.”
Clouds Above
Clouds above the mountain top,
About the river of night and day;
Looking out at the meadow crop,
Her face arrayed in the misty spray.
A thousand autumns pass,
Leaving my eyes in a frozen state;
Looking to go home, at last,
I feel our life’s divided fate.
I gaze, but letters no longer console—
Their perfumed scent has faded;
I fly alone, without a soul,
A wild goose, unaided.
Landing on an islet, exposed
Cold Wind
Many years ago, this day,
As lingering clouds
Brought out the morning rays,
I heard the east wind drown
In the sound of the ocean spray.
She came in nightly
On a foaming swell,
Lady floating lightly
On a seaborne shell.
“Oh bury me not
In the deep blue sea;
Oh bury me not
Where the cold wind flees.”
I carried her home
For miles and miles . . .
If only I’d known
It was just for a while.
The words unsaid, undone—
Gone before our time had run.
Shores of Regret
eternal track to heaven
beneath the shadows—
eyes turned up to the sky
like a prison of light
showers fallen to the sea
as if dreaming of dust
and weeping until it rolls
to the shores of regret
