WORDLESS IN MY OWN SORROW

I tried to find words of comfort

for a grief that has shattered a heart;

but I had none,

for my mind was pierced by the same

loss, and wordless

in my own sorrow I was mute

to the pain of my friend.

The dead unite us in loss,

but the loss binds us

in silence.

I turned to the wordsmiths,

to Catullus on his brother's grave

in Troy, on Auden on Yeats,

and more of the same.

But these were monuments

hacked in eternity by the great,

and ours is a sorrow and pain

of the nameless

for their loved ones,

not an ennobling feeling,

not a fine emotion for the learned

of millennia to savour;

ours is the grief of the orphaned child,

ours is the rage against

losing the hand that held our own hand

when we took our first steps

and comforted us against the fears of the night

with the certainty of

loving warmth shielding us forever.

23.01.2019