Inventory
The shelves of my life are full of stuff that's past its sell-by date.
I should not wait,
but clear the old stock straight
away.
It's New Year's Day,
a time, they say,
for resolutions,
new solutions
to old problems we should get out of the way,
pursue the good rather than the best,
retain what's useful,
chuck out all the rest:
so let it be with me, I pray.
My problem's this:
I've always been a hoarder.
Though I would keep my life in apple-pie order,
in fact I tight-rope walk across an abyss,
or, to change the metaphor,
crawl through an obstacle course,
perforce
made up of all this stuff I honestly can't think
what I have kept it for.
And in an eye's blink
I'm back in some distant time
with loves whose name I have forgotten,
suffering some misbegotten
memory of pain
that screws me up over and over again.
Whether it's something I did to them,
or they to me,
it matters not.
I have forgot
all else but this insane
longing,
belonging to who knows what,
but still aching,
like sad
heart's breaking.
It's not all bad.
If I am feeling high or low
I cannot walk down a certain street in Soho
without looking up and recalling
that is where
my sweet and fair lost love
once used to live.
And then, suddenly, I'm glad.
What I wouldn't give
to have her back,
but it was not to be.
She's dead.
Her bed is ashes
blowing in the Cairo wind.
Her photo's pinned
upon my kitchen wall
near five decades after.
She laughed at me,
and that laughter
is a memory
I clasp when cold nights blow
and though I'm sad she's gone,
it's not with woe
– that would be wrong –
but with gladness,
sadness
not unmixed with joy:
I pause below,
then about my way I onwards go.
My love, for you
these borrowed burdens must bring you rue
unneeded.
Unheeded of your own needs,
unthinking I plant the seeds
for you of future pain.
Again and again
I've done it;
when I've begun it
I've little thought of what I do
and you
for your part
and with unstinted heart
have never failed
to bear me up,
drink with me the cup
that's bitter,
gather up with me the litter
of a lifetime's garbage
I should be leaving with the rubbish
of the past.
From first to last
you are steadfast,
and never seem downcast
when once again
I dance the devils of my pain
into the space
we could be populating with our joy; your grace,
like God's,
is wondrous,
never nods,
seventy times seven hundreds
always ready,
sure and steady,
to lift me up when I lie with bloody knees;
to fly again like birds
into the trees
where words
are insufficient
to express what I am unproficient in:
unqualified, unconditional love.
And so,
sweet heavens above,
my once for-ever other,
as through
fresh times and places new
I go,
and things get rough,
as so they must,
I'd rather
trust
that then I'll think on you:
not as an unfinished tale
that cannot fail
to turn the screw
on misery recalled,
but a sweet story told,
of lost and found,
the very ground
on which my footsteps tread
away from you, away from the bed
where once we lay,
for that was yesterday,
the foundation (true) of each new today,
but I'd betray
my present lover
trying to rediscover
what once was
while forgetting
that I should be letting
the present take its course,
for good or worse,
in joy or sadness,
come what may.
I shall not lock the door
fast shut
and put the past away
in some dark attic of my soul.
In my very gut
I know my goal
should be to celebrate
everything that's made me me.
But you see,
the procession of our memories
has become an obsession,
an addiction,
a remembered fiction
that will not let me be.
As leaves fall from the trees
and daffy dillies wither
to make new mulch for tomorrow's spring,
though I may shiver
at the winter's cold,
I must constantly remind myself
that each new year's summer
cannot be so far behind.
And so,
though it's something of a bummer,
I shall stop thinking
of you every hour:
I have that power.
I know that it's a battle
that'll
tax me to the limit.
But I'll win it,
if every waking minute
I remember
not to think of you.
There,
I've done it.
It feels already like I've won it.
