A Dark Illumination

A Dark Illumination 

Once again, we are here, as we are  

on this day every year,  

two hearts lit up with pain.  

And as day falls into night,  

a little candle illumines  

this dim corner where we half-appear.  

And every flicker, like every breath,  

is a discrete sensation of hurt,  

one after the other.  

It is always the same.  

Her sitting there,  

Me sitting here (still wearing yesterday’s shirt).  

Look at the light.  

How can a flame smaller than a baby’s fist,  

sum up a death  

so faultless that no-one is to blame?  

The candle wants to warm us with its perfume,  

a fragrant devotion.  

But the aroma isn’t pleasing.  

It is vanilla, it is cloying, annoying,  

just like this room  

in which we box our ourselves.  

The window is ajar  

and a draft pulls in vagrant air.  

The flame is erratic;  

it flickers; but it survives.  

For now, the wick does what a man should:  

It stays upright like an ‘I’,  

and conveys events from above.  

It only curls and grows limp  

at the very end.  

On that wick, the light must depend.  

She gives me a shove.  

From me she wants fire.  

But that’s not what I’m feeling.  

I am not in flames.  

I’m not about to ignite the curtains  

or burn down the ceiling  

and choke our lungs with smoke,  

nor ascend the heavens on an ever-climbing pyre,   

to make the coldest regions of space  

incandescent with grief.  

I am too cold for that, too quiet,  

too stilted, too old, too weak to handle  

this pain, too stymied by unbelief, too timid  

to wallow in rage, in vain,  

against God or Nature,  

whose massive suns and stars,  

would swallow our little life without mercy  

or remainder.  

No, let us keep what little light we have,  

in this room,  

in our small still cage,  

behind these bars.  

though it’s small,  

though it cloys,  

though it’s just us.