Pain, Sorrow, Beauty

Lines from the most romantic poem

Is not how you remain in me.

It’s pain and sorrow that I remember.

Pain – when distant from an illusion

you would enter the room

to accompany the illness of my mind.

Thick cataract was closing in

before you were there

to promise a vision within reach -

a moment to witness the world real

before drowning to sleep.

Sorrow – when your red bindi turned to grey,

my jokes flying over your head.

I see the Halloween horrors of childhood

lit again in gloomy pumpkin figures.

I could see, how it resounded -

your wails, echoing through the corridors,

laughter to all but few.

I had borrowed that dark tunnel

where wheezing unborn children screamed

in the agony of unrequited love.

No, my lines refuse to profess love,

they elope from those stupid fantasies

because there’s sorrow and pain.

And there’s beauty to it.