Elegy For A Son Poem by Sheena Blackhall

‘Yes, I am lying in the Ground
But my lips are moving' : OsipMandelstam

Your life was a blind alley
Of blacked out windows
Perpetually stuck in a winter of the soul
Tormented by Harpies

To ward off night terrors
In childhood, you gripped your grandfather's hand

My little black pearl
Your hopes were hammered out
On a hard anvil
The forge that beat your talents into ash

The family album's seared by your deletion
Memory's the only dog-eared page that sticks

Nobody ever strewed your bed with petals
Or opened your ears to the lark's ascending song

Death hounded you day to day
When all you ever wanted
Was a place at the hearth
A door wide open in welcome