Waiting for Aurelia

Inspired by the character Aurelia from the movie Love Actually.

Waiting For Aurelia

 

Where must I sit upon the quays

Of yesterdays and setting suns

To watch the ships all drift away--

Their standards wave, their sails run

As like two tired, tied-up feet

With hopes to meet some foreign star;

That I might mark the ebb’s retreat

And feel the beating ocean’s heart

That ‘peats a warning seldom wrong

Of siren song across the sea

Where many go, who don’t belong,

And stumble on captivity.

But e’er the wind will call them in

And with them sails a bitter end.

 

Where must I go when ships appear

Against the clear, where worlds meet,

To call upon the quays, and shear,

By coming here, this calm, replete

With visions of Utopia--

Aurelia, where sand and sea

Entangle, and forever run

Beneath the sun; she waits for me,

Who speaks the language I don’t know

And sees below this coarse veneer,

Who doesn’t mind these rough-hewn lips,

Who stoops to kiss; then disappear.

But e’er the wind will bring them home;

Their stars disperse, and leave me ‘lone.  

 

Behind, this tired seaboard town

Could lay me down as in the fields

Where men dissolve and make no sound,

And where the ground will never heal;

Behold, I hear them calling now!

This beaten brow furls in response

As if my hopes will not allow

My falling down, though I belong

No where, if here.  I hear the shouts

Rise all about this breaking shore;

I see the stars, as they come out

Like poison’d fount, to shine the more.

And e’er the wind will paint the sky

For sailors, who will live to die.