dark

[only rob]

The Weight of Worlds





I behold the weight of worlds in anguished eyes,
in the cries of the farmers at the hail,
the cancered man, looking too deep.
No exit, the young man bawls at yondering love,
but I can not catch him as he falls,
or still the screams of the poor soldier.
I grieve with the mother of the hungry child, the
wild-eyed loner, beneath some dark eclipse,
gnash my teeth at wild and unfair fate,
but I can’t recreate glee for sorrow’s mate.

Oh, the weight of worlds I hear in garbled moans;
what remedy or solace may I provide
to a survivor, or that wounded cuckold?
What groans may poems turn to song, or bright verse
alleviate when the very sun goes dark?
How may I sleep through dried and brittle crops,
or with the resound of distant screams,
when I have seen the chaos of soldier’s dreams?
Abed, I thrash with the agony of my troubled species,
as if each flower painted by careful words
withers in all the weeping I have heard.

The weight of worlds has attached itself to me
and Shakespeare’s question occurs
as my clock strikes a metaphysical
twenty-three, “to be or not to be?”