Engraved On Sound

A pain I bear within my heart Which only music can impart. Unspoken it melts down the bone And it burns the tongue if I moan; Yet I complain once again. The happy old days of my youth The ill-natured, fools, the uncouth Wasted and left me the old age And an unsheltered narrow cage In the heavy snow and rain. There was a time in my heyday When I was halted on the way By a girl who kissed me and ran Or a lady who wished to scan My eyes. Ah, how beauties wane!* I was too shy to tell someone I loved them. In the evening sun Now sitting, I recall the grains Of harvests swept by floods on plains Like hungry birds gone insane. My pickled youth nobody buys In the markets where each man cries His fresh cucumber or carrot. I’m really sick as a parrot And well know I live in vain.† Certainly life is great for some, But it’s the death I most welcome That sets a sweet smile on my lips, Ends the world’s distasteful, sharp whips, And frees me from lifelong chain. Were I skilled as a reed player, I'd engrave, layer by layer, My bleeding soul not upon gold, But on sound, for you to behold; I’d never be under strain!‡ 7.5.’13 * Echoing W. B. Yeats’s “The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner” and “The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water” † See Thomas Hardy’s “No Buyers”. ‡ See Matthew Arnold’s “Below the Surface Stream, Shallow and Light” and especially S. T. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". No comments, please!