The next topic in the poetry book is Loss and Comfort.
I know that poems should stand on their own merit without the need for background information from the author. Nevertheless I shall give some background to this one, not because it's important for the poem but because it's important to me.
Although the poem is new, the events and emotions it refers to were in 2000 when I was travelling around the word and had recently left Quito with a group travelling south.
I was travelling because a year before my mother had died and ,after a lot of soul searching, I decided to spend some time travelling the world looking for something I couldn't quite articulate, but that I knew I wouldn't be able to find by continuing my life - working in a computer department, seeing the same people, doing the same things - as if nothing had changed.
A year later I found myself travelling with a new group. I had travelled for months with a very congenial group but we had split up and I was with now with the new group and we were not getting on well together. On the anniversary of the funeral they were having a beach party but I was too lost in my memories to join in with any enthusiasm. It was noticed and commented on but I didn't feel in the mood to explain the reasons behind it. So, leaving them to gossip about me, I walked away, down to the water's edge, to be left alone.
This poem is about that. It's written in the present tense because that's the way I'm remembering it right now.
I know that poems should stand on their own merit without the need for background information from the author. Nevertheless I shall give some background to this one, not because it's important for the poem but because it's important to me.
Although the poem is new, the events and emotions it refers to were in 2000 when I was travelling around the word and had recently left Quito with a group travelling south.
I was travelling because a year before my mother had died and ,after a lot of soul searching, I decided to spend some time travelling the world looking for something I couldn't quite articulate, but that I knew I wouldn't be able to find by continuing my life - working in a computer department, seeing the same people, doing the same things - as if nothing had changed.
A year later I found myself travelling with a new group. I had travelled for months with a very congenial group but we had split up and I was with now with the new group and we were not getting on well together. On the anniversary of the funeral they were having a beach party but I was too lost in my memories to join in with any enthusiasm. It was noticed and commented on but I didn't feel in the mood to explain the reasons behind it. So, leaving them to gossip about me, I walked away, down to the water's edge, to be left alone.
This poem is about that. It's written in the present tense because that's the way I'm remembering it right now.
Away from the crowd
I have walked away from the noise and the fires.
I am sitting alone at the edge of the sea.
I have left them the party, the music, the pyres.
The present is theirs, but the past is for me.
I have seen them and heard them, I know what they say.
They say I'm a killjoy who will not join in.
They think that I think I am better than they.
The truth is that memories are crowding my skin.
A year to the day, the decision was taken,
As I stood in the rain at the side of her grave,
That something inside me now needed to waken;
That I could not find there the things I would crave;
That I'd travel the world and with every new land
Hope that my life would have made her feel proud,
But sometimes the sadness overwhelms me still and
I find that I must walk away from the crowd.
1 comment:
Kurt Tucholsky once wrote: In totally silence, one hears the whole world.
Would like to sneak away, after reading and being impressed.
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