I Belonged To You Poem by Edmund Calleja

Longings that have passed away are like
the beautiful bodies of the dead who never aged,
conceiled in slendid sepulchres by tearful mourers
with roses at their head and jasmine at their feet.
(from a Greek poem) .

As celestial shimmering
shed it’s blanket while I slept,
I kept wiping all the tears
that were flowing as you wept.

And as the night came peeping
through the window on my bed,
it lulled my ruminations of
how we truly should have been wed.

We could have loved forever
depicting the night’s charms,
where you would have been cuddled
as I held you in my arms.

Truly God it was my wish
that forever it should last,
but your figment now has faded
like a fickle lover’s past.

Ghosts of forgotten passions
come to haunt in my sleep,
I still see you there beside me
as I begged you not to weep.

Sometimes I was the hammer
sometimes I was the nail,
but the day that you were gone
was a really sorry tale.

Under the sycamore tree
we would rest and gently kiss,
your caresses and your smiles
I will always sadly miss.

The rustle and the murmuring
of the leaves among the boughs,
who would have ever told them
I was not to be your spouse?

I miss your bright blue eyes
and their glimmer as they shone,
amid dahlias and geraniums
in the humming and its drone.

Then the cavaliers of the night
ushered in celestial light,
while the longings for your kisses
came to fill my heart’s delight.

The loving cup of happiness
on my lips its sweetness left,
Where my young illusions flowered
For a love since then bereft.

You were the summer of my youth
in my garden of desire,
where I’d hug you and embrace you
for your love I’d never tire.

You should have been the solace
in my autumn of decline,
where the verse and song I’d play
would have been our loving wine.

And if this beaker full of love
we forever never shared,
that’s because for all your love
all my life I should have cared.




November 1974