Sunset
I feel a sudden swooping kind
Of sadness when I hear
Of someone doing something
That we used to do last year
And my chest skips and sways a little
When I realise
That yesterday has just gone down
Like sunset in your eyes
So pause a while and think of he
Who very nearly said
That your sweet smile and your soft flesh
Was where he’d make his bed
(2001) I’ll (dis)grace this with a very
rare footnote, just to say
that, contrary to all expectations,
the sun appears to have risen
once again in the east, but I
remember the exact place
I wrote it, and the exact
meal I was eating, and the exact drink
I was inhaling, and the exact
place I was inhabiting, and, thankfully,
the pain floods back to me
just as if it were yesterday.
I would never
ever want to lose
the ability to feel,
and to feel alone, because to feel
alone means you can appreciate
the difference between having and having not,
having warmth and not having arms
to hold and to be held by, having not
having faces to smile when they see you,
and, having not, having not is not insignificant
I see them, every day
just yesterday I gave an enormous
five francs to a woman with cheek bones,
because she said that she didn’t have
anywhere to go, that night and I
happened to have some spare cash, jangling,
lucky for her, she doesn’t have
to be faced with people like her, day
after day, asking
for small cash, digging
a life out of lint lined
pockets, shameful
thank yous, thank you
Monsieur, vous etes
bien aimable,
oh yes, of course
I’m wonderful, don’t make
a mistake, you’re one
in a million,
because, despite
appearances, I
detest
giving money
when I don’t
have enough
for a beer, I
detest…
(2005) My final footnote (probably) is that the comment above is now history, and the sun did indeed set on that particular chapter of my life… for the better, I feel. Hey! Think positively… I could have written even more and even worse poems about this if we’d stayed together…
(2019) And how the years pass… Now I’m finally getting round to transferring all my poems over to this site, Mystic Rhythms in theory, almost 20 years to the day that I met my very own Greek goddess… I must try and send her a little hello, although last time I did she didn’t reply. But she cried when we said goodbye, at the idea we might never see each other again… I’ll let you know what happens, maybe in 2020, or 2040 if Lady Eiffel smiles on me that long… 🙂
~~~~~~~~~
© Sab Will 2000
