La marche de l’extrème
Droit-gauche, droit-gauche
Chaque pas frappe le terre
Agaçant l’Europe
En train de convaincre
Les gens de leur peur
À fin de rappeler
À la foule la Terreur
Qu’il saurait ce soir
S’armer, dirigée
Persuader l’armée
De se reveiller
Et cracher par terre
La voie retrouver
Droit-gauche, droit-gauche
Vers le pouvoir du Pays
Rectitude and moral maze
Seem like to meet their end of days
In hands of saint whose might has ways
Of punishing our own delays
While failure to address unknowns
Has sold what titles to our moans
Could yet be called mere gifts or loans
With careful words we’ll leave these zones
Ally ourselves to no more men
And disbelieve reports of when
The road to peace was better ken
Of others’ culture, sword and pen
The velvet curtain will hold fast
And legislation will bow past
Poor sight-impaired judicial mast
Whose figure seems to fade, aghast
As scales are stripped of balanced view
No counterpoint, but reference, new
Established as alternate to
Our older values, now too few
To understand the loss we face
Try to supplant a lesser place
And see the bold, inhuman race
Condemn all pity, justice, grace
Awakening at last, too late
The image of our fellows’ fate
With little thought and careless hate
We’ll watch our own asphyxiate.
Why on earth is it that even years after the event, I still cannot let you go? Your lopsided smile and ugly, grinning, gurning face plague me from hour to hour. I cannot sit in a room without smiling at some returning memory, and as warmth returns to my frozen heart, I take stock. Weighing all of my options carefully, I balance from foot to foot, leaning this way, then that. I am a pendulum, wavering, uncertain whether or whither to swing. I am a clock, stopped still the day you left me, and only now beginning to find my rhythm once more. As the shallow tick-tock of life creeps up my spine and tickles my veins into action, so the thaw begins. I must be wary, lest my wintry organs melt to a spring flood of love, and I, swept along by my own strong current, am drowned by it. Suffocated, helpless. A fisher, tangled and caught in my own nets and snared by traps of my own devising, struggling to break free. Wary indeed. As my love for you had become a mantra – words of comfort to be spoken before sleep and upon waking; My ‘I love you’s with their reedy echo in the damp morning air, somehow growing to a rope with which to hang myself – and swing I did, groaning in pain and tormenting myself minutely with your voice, your face, your scorn, derision, pity. Tearing myself down, piece by piece, until I had ceased to be. Where once I stood, proud and strong, shining brightly for all to see – lay a stone. My rougher edges smoothed to a bland pebble. My glittering core dulled by your swell and smashed on rocks of my own choosing. Broken and without pattern, without hope of re-making, mending, rebirth. I lie here, and I am troubled. That I still harbour feelings for you does not pain me or even shame me to action. Nothing I could do to myself or to others could change that fact. That these feelings grow stronger despite our mutual distance frightens and excites me. I thought I had no more tears, and now I often don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I can feel again. What I thought had to have gone forever has returned to me. Now I find myself at a crossroads with a choice. Do I go onward? Or do I turn back?
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
Why then do I find you so ugly?
And how is it that
I resent holding you close?
You are not part of me.
You are no reminder of love.
You have brought me nothing but hate.
I feel the burden of you –
I cannot carry you,
You weigh me down!
Leave me.
Katherine Shirley 