"And will you cut a stone for him,
To set above his head?
And will you cut a stone for him--
A stone for him?" she said.
Three days before, a splintered rock
Had struck her lover dead--
Had struck him in the quarry dead,
Where, careless of a warning call,
He loitered, while the shot was fired--
......
'Does the blackened ruin, situated in the stony ground between Durraj and Mutathallam, which did not speak to me, when addressed, belong to the abode of Ummi Awfa?
'And is it her dwelling at the two stony meadows, seeming as though they were the renewed tattoo marks in the sinews of the wrist?
'The wild cows and the white deer are wandering about there, one herd behind the other, while their young are springing up from every lying-down place.
'I stood again near it, (the encampment of the tribe of Awfa,) after an absence of twenty years, and with some efforts, I know her abode again after thinking awhile.
'I recognized the three stones blackened by fire at the place where the kettle used to be placed at night, and the trench round the encampment, which had not burst, like the source of a pool.
......
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
- The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
......
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day
For half his flock were in their beds
Or under green sods lay.
Once, while he nodded in a chair
At the moth-hour of the eve
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.
......
I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.
O! what sweet company!
But to go to school on a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
......
Am I lost for words or just tired of rehearsing my heart for your walls
When fair weather affections find you in the trenches of your cowardice
I’m not your enemy but you associate former joys with your demons
Making mistakes of miracles, am I the breed of love or regret?
God forbid I tell the truth as I see it
When you provoke my reminiscent heartache on the other side of silence
I don’t want to haunt you with your sins but you lock me out and all I’m left with is abandon
I speak to a void of eyes divided in full view of a nameless audience
......
Lost for knowing what to say
As I pause and reflect on you
When honesty is my mantra
But the reality lands somewhere between our lies and what is true
You tell me what to think or believe about this
When it’s all the past and it’s said and done
While I linger in the ache and you keep me there with your rejection
Trying to untangle my heart strings and decipher what I feel
......
ANGEL OF DEATH
He went to check
up on the cat
tripped over a
crooked vine table
tried to get up
smashed its circular
glass in half
moon shapes
......
Sprinting in the rainfall,
Here and there,
The childish me I hid somewhere.
Getting drenched as thunder rumbles,
Living carelessly because
I have someone to stable me when my foot fumbles.
Your hand in mine,
A lovely hold.
The bond we share
......
The sun falls,
And night begins,
Blue irises enthrall,
The eyes of my kin.
I never shared that ocean,
I was always miles behind,
always reachin',
never could unwind.
My eyes of grass,
On a summer's day,
......