© Katherine De Vere, All Rights Reserved 2023
O morning grey and windswept day!
Alone, I stand, upon a muddied beach
No one, no-soul – as far as eye can see
Or heart to tell of far horizon’s been
Therein only, my mind’s eye to keep.
All my yesterdays, like waves upon the shore
Breaking, breaking, broken again – again
Asking the sea-lit, green-lit, curling spray
Where are they that “loved me so?”
Where are they, then, that I loved truly?
My friend, you think you understand ‘lonely’?
Marking these sorrows, creeping year-by-year,
In etched, wretched lines upon my face
Past weeping, past mourning, past talking,
Dumb, like the blinking animal before the slaughterhouse.
And yet! The pain remains, that alone is uniform
A threadbare shroud, worn bitter with the wearing.
Not one remains, not one.
Not mother, sister, valentine…
(Was it only I that loved?)
What of it, Reader? Pain is not uncommon,
Suffering pervasive, happiness — a jewel rare.
“I” – as in me, that weighs upon these shifting sands
Join the drowned, the sea-dead, bone-dead souls, howling for their homes.
Wherefore fireside? Lamp-lit window? Welcome, warm embrace?
Hollow, hopeless, scoured out through and through —
O mourning, grey, cold and windswept day.