A LAMENT FOR A SINNER AND HIS SIN

Surely this has gone for too long,

this what they call 'life' -

a cavalcade of days in distress,

mistakes that end in funerals

which follow you from one

dreary season to another one in darkness,

evenings sitting with a cat

in an empty playground reading books

while mosquitoes buzz in the air.

Today it was Weber and a biography about Brodsky,

yesterday Grass and... I have forgotten

(if it wasn't Lowry and his Mexico

through a tourist's brief, drunken gaze)

just like I have forgotten, have forgotten

most of these last two years and five months

since that night when everything

was on balance and was shattered.

Forgot to be able to survive if

this is survival, this mummification while

still alive in a horror movie way

(you like them, my poor lost visiting star,

yet they scare you and you wanted,

but no more, for me to hold your hand

afterwards, afraid to go to sleep);

the pain that comes each moment of

waking into another pointless day,

the hour spent fighting with depression

before getting up, getting coffee

made and, back from the toilet, drank,

getting the computer open, books

perched on its side, medicine

for the crushing pain which the one

well-developed part of me, conscience, gives.

Forgot to survive, me the forgotten.

"They left you here

so that you would not be in their way,

they buried you alive, your family,

you will die alone" she says. Perhaps.

Perhaps hermits are made as much

as they choose their lot or "life",

that great charade, guides them

to their cave or anchorite cell.

Whoever closed the door and locked it,

whoever bricked the wall, here

I am like Julian of Norwich -

without the seekers outside the

cell where she slept in her own grave

atop the bones of her predecessors.

I am dying alone, with three cats,

and you, my Fata Morgana

whose fate I have stepped on,

crushing it. "I have so many dreams",

you said and each time

I remember, I have tears

in my eyes, and like a stone laying

heavy on my chest. But you, my

sad, doomed dreamchaser,

you say "You don't love me.

You don't care about me.

You care only about yourself.

Get away from me!"

So I will die alone.

But worse than to die alone

is to die with someone

who could have saved you, would

have wanted to save you

but didn't; one wrong person

to be with on that final day, one

who had three chances to save

you, but like Saint Peter the Apostle

denied Jesus three times, he

failed you three times, three times

he missed an opportunity

that would have seen you sitting

out in the early night air today,

drinking coffee in the light

of the northern summer night

with your dog on your side

in the terrace; you wouldn't

have many years to live,

in your age and condition,

but you would have had these,

you and your loyal dog on your side.

12.06.2019