Sad
There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy. Dante Alighieri,
/Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, USA.
You both died on me, my son, my brother,
& I was broken for many, many years.
I can no longer hide this from myself,
behind this screen of anonymity:
I have stood in empty spaces,
walked along the winter beach at midnight
stripped of everything except wind and sand and sea
& I have looked into the summer sky searching for your blue-blue eye;
& all, all, that I see, repeatedly, are grey-clouds a-skimming
blank looks.
If you could only see into my blue-blue eye
you would not sigh, nor pass me by,
so blithely.
?si=qoBx_tGA6aRfMoii
John Marks
Mon 10th Aug 2026 21:03
Across wide lands, across a wider sea,
To this sad service. Brother, am I bourn
To pay thee death’s last tribute and to mourn
By thy dead dust that cannot answer me.
This, this alone is left — ah, can it be
Thy living self blind chance from me has torn.
That cruel death has left me thus forlorn.
And thou so loved, dear Brother, lost to me?
Still, must I bring, as men have done for years,
These last despairing rites, this solemn vow.
Here offered with a love too deep to tell,
And consecrated with a brother’s tears.
Accept them, Brother all is done — and now
Forever hail, forever fare thee well.
Gaius Valerius Catullus,