BEYOND FIRE AND ICE

The sky is a wreckage

In ponds,

With deadlines concussed:

Ice-packs of denial.

The unthinkable has become

Overriding thought.

How to suppress

My feelings of loss?

Candles would flicker

In musty cloisters,

Ice would melt

Under gossip of sun.

This scarp, then, these quarried wolds –

Indifference born of treachery.

Not to cry

Is not to hurt –

But hurt forever.

Copyright Michael Newman