When You Go Away

 

 

I was struck by a line in this poem: 'and that my words are the garment of what I shall never be.' There is sorrow here, but being by WS Mervin, it so beautifully and subtly rendered. 

 

When You Go Away - WS Mervin

 

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north

The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls

Showing the black walls

The clock goes back to striking the same hour

That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes

In one breath I wake

It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth

I remember that I am falling

That I am the reason

And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be

Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy