The h2g2 Poem
Created | Updated Oct 19, 2006
Three Sonnets
When being passes into memory
And living moments breathe no more there is
Some essence time can not erase from me.
The monument to fading 'now' is this:
You were the morning, caressing sunrise
On this sad sailor shipwrecked on your shore
There was a tender healing in your eyes
You sheltered me. What I had been before
Lost meaning. And in the space that was my
Soul — that hollow, empty, longing distance —
You wrote your name and drew me deeper by
Your reckless grace. Conquered my resistance.
And when I asked you how to own this love
You smiled at me and said 'this is enough'.
Dedicated to Brenda Doyle, Rachael's mum d. 1981.
My monument for you is wet tears. I
Mark the place in me; feel the space in me
Demand that time will not erase from me
The fragments of our hurried last goodbye.
Never again will I be gathered up
In you; enfolded, sleeping, in your bed.
Now somehow circumstance has put a stop
To you; I grasp at sentences unsaid.
My eulogy for you was raw pain. I
Learned lines for you, committed crimes for you
Desperately acted out my time for you
In search of love's approval in your eyes.
My gift for you is this child. He healed me.
I will recapture all you left for me.
To absence.
Beauty understood because it's absent
Like god, democracy or maybe joy
Half-grasped in an existential insight —
Fleeting, elusive. Hunger for the not.
So confounds me when it, clothed in present
Tenses, conspires — eliminates, destroys
The fledgling yearning birthed in half-light
The lingering cadence of the song forgot.
Your voice should not be whispering, for its sound
Might disappoint the longing in my ear
Your eyes should not be smiling, for around
My need, my hunger, you might disappear.
When you were gone I loved you dearly
As you approach I cannot see you clearly.
Poetry by Various Contributors
