http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Today's poem has not appeared on the blog since 2008, a good enough reason I thought to give it an airing for those readers who may have missed it.
Now, it is often said, love is blind. True, love can be blind. Worse still, though, is
the participant in a relationship who inflicts that blindness on his or her
partner for their own selfish ends.
It
can happen to a couple on the home front or political allies on the front line.
That's life...a force for love that can make or break the human spirit. Thankfully, the latter is blessed with incredible powers of self-healing if not always quick to come into play....
A
LITTLE LIGHT RAIN
The
night I died, you cried over me
tears
that lied, for it was never
meant
to be that we’d have forever
though
spring, summer, autumn,
winter
years promising an eternity
of
love to be tucked up in some
time
capsule buried in Epping Forest
for
total strangers to chance upon
in
darker centuries come and gone
than
knew that love once lived here,
a
progressive world’s brief to let it die,
pick
its flowers, rework its songs
It’s
the power of love mends fences,
heals
wounds but better, you said,
to
let the dogs of war have their day,
grab
a lion’s share of spoils not ours,
make
good the tools mercenaries leave
for
other predators to fight over where
they
have spilt red wine on the best
tablecloths
left like out of date maps
in
a White House kitchen, reflections
on
a love and peace stacked up among
other
dirty laundry and washing-up
Who
are we to let slip an opportunity
to
sit at table with kings and queens,
presidents,
prime ministers, whatever
religious
leaders flavour of the day,
at
parties to which we’re not invited
but
by default, permitted to have our say
if
only to seal a bargain, prove a point,
make
outlaws of good people or heroes
of
a portraiture long dead and gone,
unable
to tell how it was, likely to go on
playing
the chameleon?
Ah,
I know you by your crocodile tears;
your
face appears in glossy magazines
and
billboards in every High Street
telling
us what we should do or not do,
say
or not say, eat or not eat, in case
we
start to think for ourselves, even see
our
spreadsheets inclined to agree
with
an underlying trend of inhumanity;
Heaven
forbid, anyone come to know
that
wherever the lies your tears tell fall
only
weeds will ever grow
It
takes but a little acid rain in the eye
to
blind us to hypocrisy
[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]
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