Tablets of Jet

You think that you only

Weep in remembering,

Nothing I’ve told you

Would hint at regret,

But I have the candle

We burnt at our offerings,

That wreathed its despairings

On tablets of jet.

 

I wrote and I rhymed you

By sky and by water,

I loved and desired you

In metre and song,

But needs seem to blind you,

Enrage, and remind you

That love is one garment

You’ve never put on.

 

You lost us forever

Then bled at our wounding,

Cast back every metre

Of love I had penned;

But sent me sad couplets

Composed by dead poets

That brood on disasters

Like us - in the end.

 

Now my wound is deeper

And my wound is wider,

I live with it always

And always it bleeds;

For lines of my poems

Are stubbed in your ashtrays

And songs of your goings

Are burnt on my reeds.

 

David Lewis Paget