[Ed Shacklee]

"Team Quiet Despair" -- that sounds about right. Thank you, Suzanne.

I was starting out to post "I Am," by John Clare, because of the lines,

Even the dearest, that I love the best,
Are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.

Instead, here's one by Robert Penn Warren, not a poet I usually associate with this mood:



The Cross

Once, after storm, I stood at the cliff-head,
And up black basalt the sea’s white claws
Still flung their eight fathoms to have my blood.
In the blaze of new sun they leap in cruel whiteness,
Not forgiving me that their screaming lunges
Had nightlong been no more than a dream
In the tangle and warmth of breathless dark
Of love’s huddle and sleep, while stars were black
And the tempest swooped down to snatch our tiles.

By three, wind down and sun still high,
I walked the beach of the little cove
Where scavengings of the waves were flung –
Old oranges, cordage, a bottle of beer
With the cap still tight, a baby-doll
But the face smashed in, a boom from some mast,
And most desperately hunched by volcanic stone
As though trying to cling in some final hope,
But drowned hours back you can be damned sure,
The monkey, wide-eyed, bewildered yet
By the terrible screechings and jerks and bangs,
And no friend to come by and just say ciao.

I took him up, looked in his eyes,
As orbed as dark aggies, as bright as tears,
With a glaucous glint in deep sightlessness,
Yet still seeming human with all they had seen –
Like yours or mine, if luck had run out.

So, like a fool, I say ciao to him.

Under the wet fur I felt how skin slid loose
On poor little bones, and the delicate
Fingers yet grasped, at God knew what.
So I sat with him there, watching wind abate.
No funnel on the horizon showed.
And of course, no sail. And the cliff’s shadow
Had found the cove. Well, time to go.

I took time, yes, to bury him,
In a scraped-out hole, little cairn on top.
And I enough fool to improvise
A cross –

Two sticks tied together to prop in the sand.

But what use is that? The sea comes back.