Poetry Lost and Found

 

Because I kept you waiting

And when you knocked I answered not,
Fearing to hear your voice:
A distraction to my mundane pursuits;
Like a God outraged
You deserted me.

The wheel has come full circle
And now I keep waiting for you.
The grade is made and the guerdon won –
The taste of dust in the mouth.

I listen for the old fugitive whisper,
I look open-eyed for the fleeting gleam,
But the gray dismal round
And an aching void
Mock me chill to the bone.

I roam the starry sky
And objects consecrated by Muse;
No trace I find anywhere
Of what once was my own.

In sackcloth and ashes I’ll go
And wipe a tear when I see it,
Be at one with the sleepers on the pavement
Or go down the mine with the grimy-faced
and share the contortions and convulsions
Of those whom I've never befriended.

The lepers and the fallen and the deformed
These will convass for me
The inarticulate and the illiterate
The pariahs and the long-despised
Will bring you to me
Raising me to the level
Where your sound bursts forth through me.