'cause I'm totally obsessed,
with the feeling that I'm really lying.
It's an idea that I detest,
but once gotten off my chest,
I know I'll feel less and less like crying.
I won't yield to grim despair;
I must just grin and bear,
'cause I've other irons in the fire, frying.
If I'm burnt out or I scar,
when my words have turned to char,
it's not because this Smithy's stopped trying.
So life goes on and on,
and I know I'll carry on,
with the hope of a song in my heart.
I know I must be strong,
lest my quest to belong,
is diverted or goes wrong from the start.
By now I think you've guessed,
that life is no idle jest;
what scares us most is not just the fear of dying.
It is the panic and the stress,
of emotions long suppressed;
the narcotic of self-love and self-denying.
With the passing of the days,
I know I'll find a way,
to keep that song singing in my soul.
If my life begins to fray,
at ambition's sad dismay,
there is resource in disarray controlled.
So if you find you're not impressed,
by the things that I express,
and the knot of love between us is untying;
will you not think me a pest,
if I honestly confess,
that my life with you was truly satisfying.
Though there's no objective test,
we must know that we're possessed,
of a love that's true and real and gratifying.
And if we live our lives with zest,
and keep striving for the best,
we cannot lose unless no one is buying.
So as time begins to fade,
I'll keep the promises I made,
to press that song forever to my breast.
And as the closing act is played,
when the bill of death is paid,
my final breath will sing me to my rest.
~ A song of Hope by David Smith White
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
~ Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
A lonesome seed lie cocooned in dirt;
dormant in well-packed ground.
He lies and waits in his blackened tomb,
of the day he will be found.
He sings his song of hope within
of vibrant petals on an emerald stem.
He sings of niche and promises which,
give his life some meaning.
For what he longs he can't be sure,
but he knows there is a calling.
But its golden rays are only his dream,
while he sings his song of finding.
As cool rains fall on his grave of fear,
his kernel's walls begin to tear.
He sings his song as he reaches through;
as if it were a prayer.
Pushing dirt and wiggling forth;
a twisting, squirming, grope.
Inching up through fractions of ground;
and singing a song of hope.
At last, he's through to sun and air,
and cries in joy at his new found lair.
He sobs to a breeze in a pasture fair-
and he sings his song of hope.
~ Song of Hope by John Emmett Anderson
Take care and be well.
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