By Heart -- John Thomas

Guest poem sent in by Hemant R. Mohapatra

(Poem #1089) By Heart The years pass like summer's southern rain, And time tends to gray the pain, Bury the senses and blur the consequences? Of leaving you. The pictures hold no memories, No tragedies ensue. No longer can I taste the pleasure, The treasure of loving you. Until I caught you in the air, A current so pure to assure my love. Savor my hesitation, Raze my concentration, And (for a moment) still my heart. Long enough to touch, taste, feel you again, And tear my soul apart. For I can lose sight of the sound of your pleas, And escape the ease of your eyes. But I'll never forget the soft scent of your skin, And the way that it touched mine. -- John Thomas

A lot of regular readers of Pablo Neruda would notice the unmistakable touch
of Neruda's style of poetry here. The poem caught my attention primarily
because of that reason, thinking it was another one of Neruda's creation I
had not had the chance to lay my hands on and when I went through it I was
in a good mood to thank my stars for having had the luck to hit upon this
gem of a piece - Neruda or no Neruda.. The amazing subtlety the poet
displays in the lines 'And time tends to gray the pain,//Bury the senses and
blur the consequences?// Of leaving you.' is in stark contrast with the
vehement yet sweet emotion poured forth so honestly at the end with 'But
I'll never forget the soft scent of your skin, And the way that it touched
mine.'

Ah, Misery! Poems like these almost make me feel that if it takes sadness to
write so divinely, then, so be it. Let there be the sadness of a thousand
dead bodies in the world, but let there be more poems of this genre`.

-hemant

www.rootshell.be/~hemant/