All through the Night

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

This poem appeared on my gay-interest blog in May 2012;  anyone interested can access the original post via its archives as listed on the right hand side of any blog page.

It is, in part, a love poem; the narrator could be anyone who finds comfort and inspiration in losing the love of their life. Yes, it is also partly about me, but as I have said  many times, my use of the first person plural is primarily meant to give the reader direct access to the poem as well as being a global persona; it is easier to engage with any piece of writing when made to feel you are addressing him or her directly.

I wrote this poem after the love of my life died some years ago. What does it matter that it was a gay relationship when all that matters is that it was a relationship between two people who loved each other and had high hopes of spending the rest of their lives together? As it happens, we only had a short time together, but our love sustains me still, haunts my favourite dreams and whispers words of love and encouragement in my ear whenever I am feeling low.

As I grow old and having to sleep alone, there is no room in my heart for sadness, only that once upon a time I fell in love and was loved in return. Moreover, having suffered regular periods of depression all my life, that love is the best defence against it.; time and again, it rescues me from the abyss where depression likes nothing better than to dump it victims. Love, of course, comes in all shapes and sizes; special people, places, even songs and pieces of music all play their part in helping to lift us when we are feeling so down, there seems to be no way up.

So when certain people from various socio-cultural-religious backgrounds try to tell me that gay people don’t know the meaning of either spiritual or physical love, I have only one reply..."Bollocks!" No love that is a part of us ever dies because it comprises the better part of us that we pass on to others among the better things we say and do...and so it goes on, and on, long after we, too, are gone.

You're right, this is not a gay poem as such, and why should it be? Love doesn't discriminate so why should we...or a poem?  Some would argue that falling back on memories - for sanctuary, inspiration, whatever - is simply a form of escapism from the harsher realities of any Here-and-Now - and they may well be right, but ...so what? There are worse forms of escapism than love to save us from so awful a free fall as that which configures depression.

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT

A bird sang in my garden as twilight fell;

what species it was, I could not tell,

but its song filled my darkening soul with light

and saw me all through the night

Came moon and stars to keep me company

and the bird, still it sang, as if just for me,

a song showing pictures of us to my inner sight

that saw me all through the night

Closer, dawn, new-old fears of another day

stubbornly failing to (quite) fade away;

moon and stars abandoning me to such a plight

as haunting me all through the night

Among the sun’s first rays, Apollo’s smile;

the bird, typically, came that last mile,

spreading peace and hope enough in a leafy sky

for a time to live and a time to die

Among even love songs heard or yet to hear,

none will sound sweeter to my ear

than of a bird whose species I couldn’t  make out

that once sang in my garden all night

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

[Note: An earlier version of this poems appears under the title 'Empathy' in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]