Villanelle On A Proverb Poem by William F Dougherty

The heart once broken is a heart no more.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

The proverb says that time confers relief,
heals a crimson gash or knits whole a bone
and years unlock a knuckled fist of grief

that clenches emptiness in disbelief
to keep one's wits from being overthrown,
while time, the proverb says, confers relief

from cleaving wounds, paradoxical thief,
that also tears apart fused hearts grown
beyond the lock of knuckled-fisted grief,

half-hearts collapsed empty in unbelief
at finalities weighted by lids of stone,
while time, the proverb says, confers relief

by bleaching wounds to scars—-its chief
repair—but cannot heal a heart left alone
although the years unlock the fist of grief,

and proclaim the proverbial motif
that all wounds heal, time cannot atone
for vacancy. The proverb lies. Relief
unlocks a fist, but not a throttling grief.