A Little Light Rain

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tablecloths left like out of date maps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]