The Damning Present

What does the present give birth to?  
Despite a “poet’s” apodictic claim,  
it isn’t always happiness.  
And it’s not true  the present's yield
is ever fertile, unrestricted, musing choice.  

For frequently, especially for those with broken hearts,  
or marks of harsh abuse,  
or combat wounds, or introspective sinner’s too,  
the present bears into the world  
a haunting, undimmed voice
that speaks out from the past
and grounds  
a bleakening and uncontrollable despair  
that's due
to unforgotten martial trauma still unhealed  
and always on the verge of being triggered  
into life,  
because one knows inside one’s bones  
(and inescapably)  
the dawning of the new born day  
and all its hours to come,  
will still be redolent so stubbornly  
with painful memories of inexplicable abandonments  
with heavy grief arising from a loved one’s death,  
with gnawing guilt for sins against  
the undeserving and the innocent  
committed in days past,  
that then will show themselves  
to be things yet beyond forgiveness or repair,  
and are intent, and powerful enough,  
to leech away one’s sense of “now”  
of possibilities for joy.