(MELANCHOLY WALKS)

While in its soggy cape the landscape shivered seeping,

you were by table sat, chilled, empty, and alone.

Over the black rain-soaked umbrellas dripping… dripping…,

time slowly pushed the hours hourly clockwise on.

Far off from people, far off from the distant strangeness

of pointless chattering and boring party glee

the wind above played scores of scattered note arrangements,

gems of great hailstones gleamed. Ledges rang raucously.

A short while earlier, your train had puffed, returning

from tiring, futile trips, to well-known old time land,

and the boats rocked on tide-swell waves of troubled yearning,

an entrance cold and murky, ever-drizzling, bland.

And the gas-dome was masked by drizzle never-ceasing,

on the removals van, on a soft scarf of grey.

There is a friend out there… Ceaselessly reminiscing

through the cold vacant realm in which the gale held sway.

Sweeping out all the crannies, nooks, for alienation,

for dreadful desolation, trembling anxiousness,

its gust approaching soon, to howl: No indication

of closeness left at all, no friendship, never less.

There had been times when you’d spoken to strangers, others.

They have since gone abroad. The mill grinds barren poor.

Under the surface waves, deep down the darkness smothers

insurmountable rock and uneven stony floor.

In the lake’s tangled weeds a glint of understanding

of tranquil fish, who mute, knowingly swim on by.

The water mirroring hills and woods still sleep-standing

under the beating crow’s wings murmuring as they fly.

Copper tree lightning-bolt-lit, the ground snap up-rooted,

I ventured out to quench my dry lips, rainfall-glossed.

There was a time you said: “We’re muted, muted, muted.”

So hear me out awhile, my Song of voices lost.