Atonement

This strange quiet place is 
Lined with wisdom, permeates
My air - words spin unheard
Inside these multi-coloured spines,
All-persuasive, outwardly huddled
In tidy rows, all mine should I

Want them.  But I sit in my box,
Hemmed-in by paper rustlings and
Coughs.  I duck the steady streams of
Thought that float to the ceiling like
So much cigarette smoke to hang
Lazily just beneath the neon-whites.

And my book lies face-down, my
Frown of attention stares inside, not
Out to pages drawing shapes
Before my eyes.  For you are gone.
Gone still.  And I may not re-will
You here, your head and heart

Elsewhere, your smile fixed on 
Other charms.  I am left to my 
Own devices, desires, my own
Blankness of time, bewilderment of
Mind, for my arms are empty 
As the past, vast spaces there.

This race I am in is not mine.
I carry too much care, too much
Love has been called down like
Fire for me to want any more.
I have done too much thinking
And lost my own time.  I am here

Caught-up in the years of others' lives,
I sit, chastise myself for unwise ways,
An unwise heart, faithless faith that
Erased the major part of me, led me
Through a dark door to dark ways.
I cannot recover.  The scope of

This terrain, I am told, has unlimited
Sky, a heaven that is vaulted and blue
Yet I walk the dark ravine, narrow
With no view above, behind, before,
The walls are rough-hewn and high,
A chill wind bites me and

My face.  The Fates are keen to 
See me spill myself here unseen.
I walk their hollow lane, taunted
By a Fortune whose whim has 
Worn me down to one very small
Human still shrinking.  For every

Hour of every day, I atone, I
Atone and say: mea culpa, mea
Culpa, thy Will be done.  The
Fault was my own.  In bone 
I walked with him and now alone
This ravine foul and narrowing.

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