Verses for an Anniversary

To you who at my side with sweet water

Always have stood in the summer,

And in the bitter solstice and the storm

With breast and kiss have kept me warm,

I give the permanent element,

The poem in the acknowledgement.

To you whom penury nor the crucial word

For which I barter bed and board

Could ever divide as, at my side,

You stood in humility and pride,

To you I render what is little enough

Of prizes but O give all my love.

And for the losses, the tears, the errors,

The holidays I took in mirrors,

The snowball debts of the denials

You piled upon me, for these I also

-Seeking with words somehow to defray-

Acknowledge it is impossible ever to pay.

© MY NIOBE WEEPS

Sadly under the summer arches

Sombre my memory moves and

Trailing in the jigsaw water

Recollections like hands,

Sees through the burning bridges

Where, in the distant reaches,

O my Niobe weeps.