Despair;
Despair for all I’ll never know;
For lost nights and Lethe’s pale torpid glow.
Lost is all I ever dreamed, lost amongst Mab’s loom,
Where her freezing dreaded web tinkles like
The evening snow. Razed and waterlogged, my mind
Drifts in the morning fog where all culminates in a final
Surge: a crescendo of the doubts, the labors and tests, the thoughts
Of an early death.
‘Tis still spring: the air is warm, the nights are new.
Light pilfers, sneaks and casts its gloom.
Yet I see Mab; I see her at the loom.
I feel the snow, crisp and alive, creeping on my naked skin.
The buds all wither before my eye, on every tree and flower –
No beauty will last in these early hours.
Tell me plainly, oh Queen of Air and Darkness,
Why do you make the soul quake when your
Heart draws near? Why do you suck out young life
Like the marrow from a bone? Do you feel
At home among the young and petty,
While your own soul decays but
Your face grows not weary?
She does not answer as I waver on,
Stumbling like a child who rises from a filthy pond.
Alas, she never does; she does not like the sun.
A blazing star breaks gently through the fog:
A blood orange collection of rays
To guide, remind of past summer sighs and sights.
There is sadness in these, my first few breaths,
But no regret, at least, not as of yet.
– Nick Azzopardi