WINTER

 

I remember loving you on green grass . . .

But that was far away, where green grass grows.

Time, the rapacious, longed-knifed assassin,

Slew our embrace with the changing seasons.

 

The once warm, temperate green has perished;

Only its frozen cadaver remains.

Your grey corpse is beyond recognition,

It has no hint of green or warmth or love.

 

Love’s desolation, conceived in autumn,

Has given birth to savage bitterness.

The lonely love-child raps at my window,

mourning its mother’s death, begging entry.

 

But I jettisoned my child long ago . . .

I refuse to be stirred by its weeping;

I have become deaf to its sad howling.

I venture outside, blind to its sorrow.

 

Then, the callous winter, like some street thug,

Insultingly spits cold breath in my face.

It steals the contents from my well-worn soul

Before escaping down a drab alley.

 

Oh, cruel fate! Your taunting voice stings my ears!

Your hollow remembrances cloud my sight!

You have stripped nobility from my reach!

You have tossed me in your icy waters!

 

And I have become cold like the winter,

As my youthful color vomits grey hues;

While I waste my windswept days pondering

How the lush green grass became thin, grey ice . . .