We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

27.4.18

I Am Lonely

Poetry Month, day 27















In Let's Join the Children at "imaginary garden with real toads", we are invited to use one of several paintings by children as inspiration. This one was painted by a 13-year-old. After I gazed at it a while, this unknown voice spoke through me (btw it felt male):


I Am Lonely

I am lonely under the purple sunset.
On black hills against the sky, I am lonely.

Music is no solace, as I am not the music.
Or, in another reality, I am nothing but
the music. Which I play with competence
on my Baby Grand, but not with soul,
not with the outrageous passion I knew
when you and I were young, when you
painted me in stark silhouette, here.

How did you know to paint my loneliness
before it had arrived – before the silver moon
rose to make us all lonely, in our separate
outposts of the dark? How did you know
that I would look so calm and relaxed, 
my foot pumping the pedal, my back straight
and my hair worn in that careless ponytail?

I wanted to walk with you, in among
visible trees, with birds chirping. I wanted
to be just as other couples, to be ordinary.
I might have sung a little, in that daylight,
and you might have sung with me – no need 
to perch alone on a height, no need to be 
a focus for the million burning eyes of night.

But the sky is washed white, stained purple.
The hills are black. My face is invisible.

16 comments:

  1. You know, sometimes i think, just that: life's a series of contradictions.

    Much🌼love

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  2. I wanted to be ordinary

    This resonated with me. Some people have a lot of difficulty in being ordinary. It takes years of practice. In the survival stakes it comes highly recommended, otherwise a person might find herself transformed into something tall red and minus a head:)

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  3. I feel such melancholy as I read your words. I especially relate to
    "before the silver moon
    rose to make us all lonely, in our separate
    outposts of the dark?" :-)

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  4. "How did you know to paint my loneliness before it had arrived".. gosh this line tugs at my heart 💜 Such a beautifully eloquent poem, Rosemary!🌹

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  5. Wow. So totally awash in loneliness! I'v pulled out the same lines as Sanaa: "How did you know to paint my loneliness
    before it had arrived – before the silver moon
    rose to make us all lonely, in our separate
    outposts of the dark?"

    I felt the wonder as well.

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  6. A wonderful juxtaposition between the colour and the darkness. And how well that picture suits your blog!

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  7. Such an eloquent piece Rosemary. Full of meaning.

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  8. Wow Rosemary. "How did you know to paint my loneliness before it had arrived". Such a melancholy poem but so resonate of true loneliness.

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  9. So very beautiful! I especially like "How did you know to paint my loneliness before it had arrived?" I love this poem!

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  10. Another time, another place...if only...These are the sad words I hear woven between your elegant write.

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  11. My heart is full of sighs and tears that aren't mine. I almost typed "that aren't mine yet", or "at the moment", because at one point in our lives each of us--even if just for a bit--sits on that piano, face lost, horizon full of the wrong sort of dark.

    I want to hug this poem, learn its face, share things with it...

    ...until it no longer feels lonely.

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  12. There is so much love and pain in this. Only people with the most parched and desolate of hearts would deny the strength of the love depicted here.

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  13. It is nice that he remembers her, the way she is, and treats her like an equal even though she is different. That is the way love works. You picture reminded me of when we were docked in a fiord in Norway and up on the hill, mountain to some, there was a piano. When we came back down a little a fellow was playing it.
    ..

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    Replies
    1. Oh, Jim, what a delightful – and delightfully strange – story!

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  14. wanting to be ordinary - she is looking back and her face is invisible (except for the way he remembers her - the way she remembers herself with him...) A very yearning, lonely poem. Fame and fortune weren't the answer for her... She played music but couldn't sing along ...

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