THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

Paradox

I feel a wry piece of a legacy
Sylvia Plath's head in the oven
Rocks in Virginia Woolf's pockets
Hamlet's oh so omnipresent consummation
Devoutly to be wished

The pain whispers endlessly
Flatly, prosaically:
"What is the point?"
And what has poetry to do with this?

Syphilis took both Mozart and Schubert
One damp, late night binge and it's following fever
Lifted Shakespeare from this world
Like an errant piece of cambric in the wind
So much for reason
To go with your rhyme

I wanted my children
With a rock deep, earth splitting passion
And now, in a silken sort of irony
They hold me here
A quivering butterfly stiff pinned to a card
Not with malice, but with love
And a need that, while diminishing,
I still must listen to
I still must hear
Despite the ceaseless, seductive, sibilant whispers of the
Pain

Now I know
I will never fly again
Never the freedom of the bright blue wind
Never the rush of a blazing, liquid sky
But there will be no euthanasia
No kindly bottle filled with desensitizing fumes
No easing oven, no numbing stream
I will continue
I will tremor and flutter
Wobble and twitch
Pinned within this
Pain
Trapped
Within this
Paradox


©Edwina Peterson Cross