I Left My Soul Behind
I will die beneath no proper name,
But numbers scrawled in rain and shame;
A borrowed coat, a borrowed face,
The last of me in a friends borrowed grave.
They will find me where the gaslights bleed
A jaundiced glow upon my head,
My tongue untrue, my thoughts undone,
My mind a house with doors all spun.
Was it the drink? The ballot’s fraud?
The fever’s grasp? God’s final nod?
The papers guessed, the doctors stared—
No truth would stay, no lie was spared.
I drifted then through fractured days,
Through opium fog and coffin haze,
Calling a name no ear could hear,
Clutching my ghosts I held most dear.
“Lord help my poor soul,”—so I cried,
And in that plea, unfinished, died.
No lover spoke. No bell was unrung.
My ending—broken, blunt, unsung.
But tell me this, you living few
Who sift my bones for something new:
Had love been kind, had bread been sure,
Had peace been mine, and health secure—
Had fate not thirsted for my pain,
Nor circumstance conspired in vain—
Would death have worn so strange a mask?
Would madness still have sealed the task?
Perhaps I’d fade in quieter light,
A lamp put out by the gentle good night;
A name intact, a hand to hold,
Not “anonymous,” tagged toe and cold.
Yet know this well—though lost, misread,
Unnamed among the nameless dead:
The life I lived, the words I gave,
Outlived the dark that was my grave.
For death may claim the man, it’s true,
But not the voice that still speaks to you.
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