For Time Was Deep Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

For Time was deep
And past and gone
See! The sunset is long passed
Even the red dusk is deep
And days were horrible
Now of horror the apex
Approaches: it be night.
See! The dark curtain in the heavens
Already formed beckons with
The first star light and the uneasy
Flowing of the weak moon's light.


Time here on this Earth
What was it
But just a string of sufferings?
Defeat after defeat, tragedy upon
Tragedy:
Of disappointments I have had a
Share all disproportionate and vast:
What remains then?
Tell me what remains?


My verse was there, my chant and
Song from often a parched throat
Burning with pain
And suffering:
That was there, but even so,
This Earth has made secure
A worse disappointment when
She wove the garb
Of cruel oblivion for such labor done
And hours long and days and months
And years of suffering.


Earth covers all that remains
Perhaps
My worst it will preserve and fix
Impaled head to a pole for all
Eyes' sight.
Was not what was done not
Enough?


But the worst of the worst
Was her weaving of the cloth
And net
Of stark oblivion:
In retort and disappointed thus
Working on an Immortality
I suspended then
For I saw that worthwhile
That I saw
To do and live experiencing.


There be the dryness
Now
That I feel from
The hunger and the thirst
She left me in:
Yet
In the Heavens there be a hand
That will Justice do
Centuries and more
But will be done.


Where to breathe all the day
And think of Ideas great serene
Though in a few own acres
Roaming:
Come the noon
And you will break some humble
Bread and sip some wine:
Then
To a deserved nap - not lazy
For
Arisen soon,
To further work of excellence
And suffering I hie
Till end of day will close
My book of happy toil and work.


Ah! that be what be wanted
Desired!


Away!
Away from rising with a head of
Thoughts
Away from sighing the first word
Of waking
Away from tossing in sleepless
Nights
Away from dreaming horrors in
The tired times