“My Apologies” — Rudyard Kipling 1932
Rudyard Kipling
"Master, pity they servant !
He is deaf and 3 parts blind.
He cannot catch thy commandments.
He cannot read Thy mind.
Oh, leave him not to his loneliness;
nor make him thy kitten scorn.
He hath none other God than Thee
since the year that he was born .
Lord look down on they servant!
Bad things have come to pass.
There is no heat in the mid-day sun,
nor health in the way side grass.
His bones are full of an old disease-
his torments run and increase.
Lord, make haste with thy lightenings
and grant him quick release."
—-Rudyard Kipling, ‘ His Apologies ‘ 1932
Listening
Paradox
I enter into today with the celebration of loss and love —
I cherish your bedside as we said good bye and
All I could do is cry
It has been five years and your sweet desperation breathed between two places
Your eyes closed as some said the “Our Father” and others’ dark faces
Posturing, some told lies and some truths; you listened.
Reaching into the depths of the last moments, you closed your eyes
For the last time you pulled from a place we all know only once in time
You called out ” I love you.” The room quieted
copyrighted: CMM 2016
Another Place
I walk upon the canvas
the gray and green elephants
walk around me.
Always in dimensional lights
of bright and then dim
the gathering of familiar faces
was all that I could see.
I look to see upstairs to find
and you were not there.
I continued down the stairs
the face of your adversary
standing fatter and pompous.
A distant call was hung into space
I heard the gritty sound of ignorance,
I heard the sound of disgrace.
I never saw but knew.
I asked this fatter one where,
where were you?
He turned to another and gave directions
I could no longer contain the pain,
as I beat upon his chest and
cried with years of disdain…
Sisters
I tried to cry but the pain was there
I felt the hour of our shared despair
Sisters bleed as time turned gray
Mingled tears from another day
A mother gone so much not said
A wilted memory and sadness shed
A soft word in a written note
A longing shared our grasps remote
Sisters bleed as time turned gray
Mingled tears for another day .
Copyrighted: 2016 CMM
A Poem
If I wrote among the willows would the earth receive my tears ?
Would the roots gather moisture and return the pain of years ?
If I dry my tears with ashes and wipe my anguish with moss,
would the day seem less melancholy and the passing less a loss ?
Be with me a moment and I will gather in the rain
All the earth of my humanity and the lightening of my pain …
copyrighted: CMM 2014
Yeats
I Will Never Forget
The Last Poem
(RIP Jan. 2011)
I have started to cry
causing tears up over my eyes,
but few come out.
A silence spreads
a bit of waiting for new breath,
my face looks up again.
It passes,
tears wiped away,
it passes.
© July 17, 2009