When Sorrows Come

(For Fer)

¨When sorrows come they come not as single spies but in battalions¨ (Shakespeare, Hamlet.)

When sorrows come
They do not always flow
Like light in water,
Or the blood in the river of our hearts,
But losing the moon’s pull,
Well up, motionless, at the sedged-rim
Out of our reach,
In the slow bent bow that is
Beyond the swift channel to the sea.

When sorrows come
We lose way
Disturb the mind’s processing
So that becalmed,
Night after night,
We try again to find
The measured fall we followed
Into sleep.

Lie awake, discordant,
Waiting for the feared rise
In the water’s level,
That will move us on
Downstream,
Free.