“To part at last without kiss,
Beside the haystack in the
floods.”
-William Morris.
I cannot give you reasons
enough,
I do not myself understand
The loud lover, praying in
sin,
Or the pain of those who
sin in prayer.
A good-bye hurts a hundred
times more,
Emptying the soul, embitte-
ring the heart,
Much more than a fatal
spear wound would.
The happy love is flown,
a by-gone glow;
Locked in memory’s gloomy
corridors;
A mere past, life imprisoned
in grief;
Robbed of fulfillment, future
condemned to tears,
Gazing sadly over the prey
of previous existence.
A good-bye hurts.
Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, the poet was raised in a politically prominent family; yet in his early teens, the poet and his family emigrated to the United States, where the poet lived for nearly two decades. The poet now lives in his land of birth and works as a freelance journalist and writer. He feels a particular attachment to John Keats and Percy Shelley for their vehement opposition to the inhumane effects on ordinary people such as the consequences of industrial development in their lifetimes–and reminds us that technological progress today does the same: ‘Weep, for the world is wrong!’ (Percy Shelley, “Dirge”)
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beautiful poem.