A Limited Life

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Take my breath away
yet let me live
my blinded eyes
they still can see the sun
I walk but cannot move
for fear to fall
my stulted words
restricted to my pen

Now all my thoughts
are centred on myself
not touch nor closeness
are allowed
to stunt my waking dreams
and life depends
on instant ends
the future makes no sense
and time has ceased

For now has lost its meaning
in the drift in which I live
day melds into night
and then returns
but only to repeat
its torpid trend
refusing to rekindle
that fire which burns
within my ashes urn

 

LIFE’S EPITHET

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Night
no light
And all is dark

Sleep
Deep sleep
No time to mark

Dream
Sweet dream
Life’s hurt forget

Death
Last breath
Life’s epithet

 

 

Reverie#8: A Song Before Leaving

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Oh my love
paint me into the shadows of your dreams
I want to be there among the drifting moonbeams of your waning passion
and as their dim light fades in the morning dew
to watch as our hopes sink slowly
through pools of deepest blue.

Let their adagio
their mellow harmonies
accompany the murmurings of my fading breath
and as its remnants settle on the bed of those fathomless depths
let them guide my blissful path to Heaven

 

‘I Am’ by Sylvia Plath

[  # 75 of My Favourite Short Poems  ]

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‘I took a deep breath

and listened to the old brag of my heart:

I am,

I am,

I am.’

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Today’s offering is not, strictly speaking a poem.  It is a very short, one sentence, quotation from the ‘The Bell Jar’, (written under the pseudonym, ‘Victoria Lucas’), the only novel ever written by the American poet, Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide, aged 30, shortly after its publication in 1963.

I am using it today as its introspection does mirror that of John Clare, whose ‘I Am’ verses I featured a week ago.  Both Clare and Plath were troubled beings, suffering for long periods of their lives from severe mood swings and depression.

In this one sentence from her novel, Sylvia Plath, cries out with similar force to that which John Clare was expressing in his poem, for the self-belief and recognition which both felt had eluded them . . .  ‘I AM! yet what I am who cares, or knows?’