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The rags of time

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The guttering rain of home 

Stains the memory

Longer than churches

Can stand.

Is it duty to devotion

Or devotion to duty that keeps

Me standing in this field of ripe poppies?

At a loss. I don't know

How can we translate this chaos

Into words?

The grammar of suffering

Is indecipherable.

Lost in translation

Faith no longer floods my mind

My mind reminds me

That my veins are clogged with curdled liquor

And all is as it was before

Bloodstains on a wooden floor....

Leading to a locked and bolted door.

I stray away

From the empty promises of home,

Embed myself in this fraction of a day.

Remain the same for hours, minutes, days, drift away,

Escape a jarring remembrance of a past

Too raw, too ill-begotten, for this sunny day to last.

Christ, you send the rain on the just and unjust alike,

On our good and evil selves. You see straight into

The hearts of men who do not bend or falter.

You teach me to paint a mirage of hope

In this sandstorm of brokenness.

And to believe that the image is true. 

.......

 

◄ A love supreme

Lovers' parting ►

Comments

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John Marks

Sun 2nd Feb 2020 00:28

Thank you Jennifer and Keith. Your appreciation of my work means a lot to me.

“We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell
Of saddest thought.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley,

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jennifer Malden

Sat 1st Feb 2020 17:46

Very sad - a great deal of interesting language - stains the memory - duty to devotion - then turned round - the grammar of suffering. To read again and again. Agree with Keith - another great poem.

Jennifer

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keith jeffries

Sat 1st Feb 2020 16:38

John,

You take the reader from brokenness, chaos and despair on a road to hope in he who is eternal and whose omniscience we can place our trust in, even though it leaves us with a sense of bewilderment.

"Embedded myself in this fraction of a day", The present is all we can really do anything about. The Sacrament of the Present moment.

Another great poem

Thank you for this

Keith

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