Hour
Sleepless
in the cold dark,
I look
through the closed dim
door be-
fore me, which be-
comes an
abyss into
which my
memories have
fallen
past laughter or
horror,
passion or hard
work—my
memories of
our past
laughter, horror,
passion,
hard work. An ache
of be-
ing. An ache of
being,
over love. An
ache of
being over
love. Like
projections on
the screen
of the heavy
window
curtains, flashing
lights of
a slow-scraping
after-
midnight snowplow
for a
moment pulse in
this room.
-Reginald Gibbons
-Reginald Gibbons
Posts
Here's a poem in more traditional form, but I think one just as effective, which addresses the same anguish of loss.
ReplyDeleteSNOW MELTING
Snow melting when I left you, and I took
This fragile bone we'd found in melting snow
Before I left, exposed beside a brook
Where racoons washed their hands. And this,
I know,
Is that racoon we'd watched for every day.
Though at the time her wild human hand
Had gestured inexplicably, I say
Her meaning now is more than I can stand.
We've reasons, we have reasons, so we say,
For giving love, and for withholding it.
I who would love must marvel at the way
I know aloneness when I'm holding it,
Know near and far as words for live and die,
Know distance, as I'm trying to draw near,
Growing immense, and know, but don't know why,
Things seen up close enlarge, then disappear.
Tonight this small room seems too huge
to cross,
And my life is that looming kind of place.
Here, left with this alone, and at a loss
I hold an alien and vacant face
Which shrinks away, and yet is magnified--
More so than I seem able to explain.
Tonight the giant galaxies outside
Are tiny, tiny on my windowpane.
--Gertrud Schnackenberg