Prisoner

Empty now—I believe it stands—
The tomb where I learned to breathe.
Time with its suffocating sands
Cannot tear what makes me grieve.

What trees once hid the sky
Yet stain my dreaming eye
And nothing can face the nightmare
Of the soul I left hanging there

How it aches to assure
The flesh it once wore
Is left with leaves behind
And yet decays inside my mind.

Is my face yet in the rain,
So afraid to be free
Waiting for me to come again
To the terror today I still can see

As two halves leagues remote,
Reaching with love to hate—
Hearing the remonstrance float
In the shell my thoughts create?

Who speaks as though I exist
Beyond the stare I give
To the birdsong I kissed
That shewed me I still live?

That song—all I can know
I cannot ever let go
Beyond the new tomb’s door—
It is the only peace of yore.