Disclaimer

This blog ran for more than two years with no graphics--and it received about 50 page views. I was advised to add graphics; after seeing the huge public that followed blogs dedicated to homoerotic images, I decided to use that kind. The result was a dramatically increased number of monthly page views, and the number has remained fairly steady. Most of the images were found on the internet; although they are assumed to be in the public domain, they are identified as far as possible. They are exhibited under the Fair Use protections of United States copyright law: their function is simply to attract readers to the poems--I receive no economic benefit from them or from the blog. Nevertheless, they will be removed if they are copyrighted and the owner so desires. 1260 x 290

POEMAS EN ESPAÑOL -- 2009: January 8, April 12, August 3 . . . . 2010: January 13 . . . . 2013: June 30, November 28, December 8 . . . . 2014: September 25, November 30 . . . . 2015: July 9, October 22 . . . . 2016: February 12, August 1, December 28 . . . . 2017: March 2, September 5 . . . . 2018: May 10, July 15, November 3 . . . . 2019: August 4, December 5 . . . . 2020: December 1 . . . . 2021: October 12, December 3 . . . . 2022: April 15, June 21 . . . . 2023: January 3, April 2, May 9, June 6.

Monday, May 15, 2017

THE FAREWELL

                                                      In Memoriam
                                          all the victims of the plague                

   
 
                        The speaker is a gay man dying of AIDS.          


          Now with accelerating force I feel
          the world fall back and reel away from me:  
                  
          Outside my window ceaselessly
          the wind streams by, and every tree
          spends itself terminally in leaves
          that give themselves into the air
          and twist away, fall down the street,
          scud, stumble, scurry out of sight
          under the culverts, into the night.   

          And all night long, beneath my dreams
          the worlds great, rushing rivers drain
          across the continents, down the wide plains,
          into the dark, dissolving sea.  

          All Nature gives itself away
          in perpetual farewell.  

          Now while my body’s failing cells
          detach themselves and drift away,
          you separate yourself from me.
          My hands, that once could keep you near,
          attempt to follow, tentatively,
          and lose themselves in empty air. 
          My eyes still seek your face, no longer there; 
          my ears strain after you, your voice, your feet
          retreating down hospital passageways.  

          My heart is gone;
          my soul has ceased to be my own;
          my thoughts no longer belong to me;
          my peace is broken, my pride pulled down.  

          Great is the power of Nature’s law,
          that every soul and body must obey;
          the writ that runs through every thing,
          the universal flaw;
          that not even Love can stay.                         






Followers