Time and Memory

If Only ...

If only we could meet again
And curse the days of yore
Forget them and anew begin
And love, and love restore

 

If only we could change the past
And meet again in love
And shun our former ills at last
And all the pain thereof

Our hearts renewed could reunite
And one, and one could be
And we could live in love's dear light
Through all eternity

But time will not assuage the pain
That memory holds dear
And though reunion I might fain
I fain it false, I fear

-jwm

Of Pain

Pain

It is a momentary hollowing out of spirit
An abrupt suspension of hope
The ontic expression of life's secret contempt
It is the God of fear

-jwm

To the Weary

When Sadness Has My Soul Distraught

When sadness has my soul distraught
And twists my weary, weary bones
And owns my bright blue days with gray
And manifests with moans

I will not shrink, nor I repine
Beneath the anguish running deep
Nor sleep will I through all the day

Nor endless will I weep

For though the pain and woe are real
I know that inly I am strong
Let throngs of troubles trouble me
They cannot quench my song

-jwm

Poetic Parameters:

Stanza: Quatrain 
Meter: Lines 1 through 3, tetrameter; line 4,  trimeter

Rhyme scheme: abab dcdc efef 

Note: Notice that the second word of the third line of each stanza rhymes with the last word of both lines two and four (I thought it a good device to use to keep the poem ‘glued together’ better).

Love Unrequited

I write, and yet I've never wrote
Of heart-felt pain that love has smote,
Or love undying skirting death
Whose deep-blue heart holds heavy breath.
I've never woeful had to write
Of love's dark unrequiting night,
Nor could I fathom this the day
That she would have me so dismayed ..

O my- alas! my heart in throes ..
My soul abandoned to its woes ..
For love long sought seems sought in vain,
And now I'm reeling here in pain.

envoi

Still, even in this pain I pine
To bind with her (her heart to know) ..
And this despite the dismal signs
That warn me she increases woe.

-jwm

My Lovely Jean

I smell the cold in the rain.
It touches me through the screen
And weeps for my gain:
Its nemesis, my lovely Jean.

I found her beauty in the blue
Beyond the loamy medium,
Far beyond the multi-hue,
And further still from all this tedium.
Through it she pulled me to her heart,
And all that I called ‘I’ repined-
Since now its world was torn apart
By Love that pulled me from its bind.

Now pain sleeps in the silhouettes-
In clouded blues above and bold-
And thunders down on Jean its threats,
While shedding tears that smell of cold.

-jwm



Of the Poem:

The idea was to represent redemptive love mythologically. The story is of a person pulled into the heart of the highest heavens and, leaving the viler aspects of nature behind in the clouds, is made one with heavenly Love.

The darker aspect of the poem is Pain (in many ways one's former love), of which the raining sky and those thunderclouds represent.


I chose only to follow a rhyme scheme (there's no intentional meter).