Each morning I awake

And shake my tired head

Another day...

I heat the old cold coffee

Then the panic hits me

'My God!, you lunatic!

What have you done?

Look what you wrote!

Do you remember what you said?

You imagined it all!'

Dreadful waking fever dreams

Cursed amygdalan frenzies

...Then it starts again

A sinking seeping sadness

Creeping in

That feeling of this world

Breaking

Like waves of the sea

Crashing on us, on me

Suffering swelling

Hate virus spreading

Until empathy is madness

And if you're not insane

In this way, in this world

You too must be crazy

(And again the words

Or my skills fail me)

These days I often fall out of bed

(Stupefied by senseless times)

I stand to attention

Ready again to wrestle 1

That dark angel2

A never-ending war

At best, to draw

Unspeakable sounds

From out of thin air

Isn’t so much pain-earned art

Just a richer description

Of the ‘self’ in fall?

The craft keeping alive

A feeling of complete control

Yet, it is only mastery

Of the strokes we use to trace

The destruction of that place

We thought our home

The song of a soul

That must suffer to grow

Crying out, in a kind of praise

For God's most awful

Gifts of grace3

The unwanted loved lament

Resonating

Each reverberating

Breaking heart

And though we poets know

Our universe ensures

All fools who sing

The Truth must fail

Yet, still we vow

To speak that truth

(The part we are blessed to hear)

Until

The end

Footnotes:

1. Read my 'translation' of Rilke's 'The Watcher'

2. “...Because you do not wrestle with your angel.
   Because you dare to live without God.
   Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp.“
   (Leonard Cohen, 'Book of Mercy')

3. "He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God"
   
   (Aeschylus c.525–456 bc, from 'Agamemnon')