Tablets Of Jet Poem by David Lewis Paget

You think that you only
Weep in remembering,
Nothing I’ve told you
Would hint at regret,
But I have the candle
We burnt at our offerings,
That wreathed its despairings
On tablets of jet.

I wrote and I rhymed you
By sky and by water,
I loved and desired you
In metre and song,
But needs seem to blind you,
Enrage, and remind you
That love is one garment
You’ve never put on.

You lost us forever
Then bled at our wounding,
Cast back every metre
Of love I had penned;
But sent me sad couplets
Composed by dead poets
That brood on disasters
Like us – in the end.

Now my wound is deeper
And my wound is wider,
I live with it always
And always it bleeds;
For lines of my poems
Are stubbed in your ashtrays
And songs of your goings
Are burnt on my reeds.

3 June 1992