one winters night

One winters night.

One winters night I trudged, cold and weary,
Through mocking, matching streets, just as drab and dreary,
All I desired was the peaceful bliss of my bed,
But a dreadful melancholy I received instead.
Pondering upon the contents of my heart and mind,
Some other way, some other love, I sought to find.
I love her, yet she does not love me
I am simply alone, drifting, falling free.
To chase an unrequited love makes you become,
The wisest fool in all of Christendom.
My evangelical friend has a dream,
Which to my wildly questing eye ’twould seem,
Like poetry and god, to have been dead many a year,
Merely leaving a lasting, frantic fear.
His angelic vision is to me now, at most,
God the echo, god the shadow, and god the ghost,
And my romantic philosophy is laid to waste.
In a warm grave Byron lies, cold and chaste,
Boy Keats sickened, festered, was laid to rest,
Blake, Shelley, Wordsworth, all set in the west.
Romantics all, with love in their poetry,
Their once magical words now the cheapest cruelty.
Poe’s Raven and Arnold’s Dover Beach,
Is all that is left within my reach.
I slowly tramped in the gathering gloom,
Closer and closer to my comfortable room.
At long last I reached my surrogate womb,
Which now seemed to be a pleasant tomb.
And so I turned back, to the wind and the rain.
Perhaps I hoped they could quench the pain.
I wanted to wander, to hide, to be lost
I ached just to tell her, no matter the cost.
But if she should shun me? Then my life is forfeit
Hiding my heart will kill me as surely. Then so be it.
For me as for Romeo, death is better than exile
I have no life if I cannot see her smile.
Through these dark familiar terrors I grope,
Desperately seeking some last shred or scrap of hope.
There is no hope. Instead anger defeats my fears
Hatred and bile burn through the veil of tears
I no longer go gentle into that good night
I shriek and scream and dream of a fight
For there is one who keeps her heart in a cage
I dream that some avatar of white hot holy rage
Will that smirking mocking daemon smite,
With a strength born of love, and malice and spite
All the daemon desires is to exercise his mastery
In some grotesque puppetry, love’s false parody,
To desecrate some poets phrase, to make her bow to his lie
To kick her and see if, this time, she’ll cry
Every sinew yearns to set her free
My heart burns and fists itch at each new cruelty
An eye for an eye is all that’s on my mind
And another eye and another eye until everyone is blind
I want to let slip my innermost beast
Let it smell the blood, let it feast
But this cruellest of devils is an angel in her eye
Attacking it drives a wedge between her and I.
Shackled and confused, my beast is led away
Beauty hath stayed his hand, at least for today.
Love, and hate have abandoned me as weak and maimed,
I fall in the dirt, undead, and drained.
Beauty and the beast hath both left me alone
Alone with my despair, I whimper and moan
What shall I do? I no longer see her light
So I shall lie in a gutter and cry, one winters night.

Luke John Davies
(1987- present)