Poems 4

And here’s another poem I wrote, a few years back now. A little too obsessed with rhyme and shape.

The Next Day                                                                

A restless night: the wind and rain

Thrash against my window pane,

And in the middle of the squall

I hear a sound so slight, so small:

A tinkling bell? A ring? A strand

Fell from that bracelet on your hand?

I wake next morning all alone,

This nest you stealthily have flown

Without that whispered lover’s kiss

(Though other things I’m sure to miss:

Your voice, your soft sweet disarray

All vanished now you’ve gone away).

But in the gloom, upon the floor,

A glint of metal near my door,

A casual key, dropped haplessly?

I’m thinking: “No, it’s there for me,

You left it when you went away

And didn’t have the heart to say

“Goodbye, my Love””. It all comes back:

The wind and rain, the night so black,

And then that sharp metallic sound,

The Key my lover left I’ve found.

I put my hand upon the door,

Why it is locked I can’t be sure;

I find the lock and turn the Key,

The hinges creak remorselessly,

My life I see, in fading light,

Stretched out before me, black and white,

And while transfixed I stand and gaze,

The sun arises, in a blaze

Of colour, it transforms the hue

To green and yellow, red and blue;

Drab avenues, with statues lined,

With people moving now I find:

Familiar faces set in stone

Now laugh and cry, they are my own

Folk, lost forever, now re-found

Upon this bloody battle ground.