The Echo of What Remains Collected Poems of Wanda Lea Brayton
Old lovers drag their burdens,
rattling rusted chains behind them,
deeply scarring floors with memories
(or is it simply wishful thinking on our part?)
In the night, I hear their moans
(or is it my own voice I hear, perhaps?)
as they wrench and tear their garments
in grief that will not give,
only take from the moment what it will,
what you will allow them to gather, unrepentant.
Why will they not leave us in solitude,
to remember the life we once held sacred,
instead of turning and returning
to haunt our days, to wreck our nights?
Temperamental creatures they are,
these reminiscences of how and what we thought things were,
not who and where they became
as time invariably passes and passed.
With our daggers unsheathed, we dance in Sanskrit,
melding words to images, as if attempting
to add a delicate etching to a mighty, solid sculpture -
they need no adornments, no fragile tithings.
Leave them alone, once and for all.
Move on, you creatures of habit,
with your forlorn eyes staring into the distance -
move on, forget, be silent.
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