Absent Heroes

I am saved from madness

By Neruda and the verses he wrote for Matilde

Reminders that love is still possible

Though we be separated by time

And ugly history. Hurting too is inevitable

Taken together, to make a living

Of all our existence.

Henry Charles Bukowski

Kindred spirits, you and I.

Writes his mind as if it were my own

Reminisces of his Jane

And the other broken people

Flitting past by night light

They are my memories, my kind of people

Langston Hughes!

I will call, you will answer

You will bring history, perspective

Words, tender offerings

To help me shatter the darkness

Smash this night, break this shadow

Make from it a thousand lights to guide me home

Tennyson,

With you, my mind and soul make music

Make atonement, find forgiveness

Mourn the passing of the faithful

Friends like brothers, love that ends as all else,

Leaves nothing, only hurting anger

Then hate or indifference. It’s all in the loving

I will not look to Ted Hughes to speak to me of forever

But it is you I’ll remember when I see

The toil of all our ages lost to intemperate men

For whose sins we’ll pay with the blood of absent heroes

In time, in full. Unless I pray to a god I cannot see

For redemption, for deliverance

From a hell he hath by his own hands made