The Arts: Poetry
A Famine of Tears
The Shadows
cast their brilliance
On wet and
littered streets
Where
dreams are trampled
By a dazed
and dying multitude
Unmindful
of the supplications
Of the
teary-eyed prophetess,
Holding
forth an inane paper cup -
Like an
ignored and rejected prayer.
Even the
sultry light retreated
From this
disparate apparition,
Earnestly
withholding its life,
Reserving
it for an echoic new day,
Leaving the
mendicant seeress
To grope
about for significance,
Unsure of
finding her way -
Like a lost
and weeping child.
And still
she persists, this waif,
Salvaging
dreams from trash cans,
Hapless victim of a dare long ago.
Hapless victim of a dare long ago.
And yet she
persists, our little sage,
Imploring the surging crowd,
"Spare
some tears, spare some tears,"
But the
dead multitude moves on -
Like routed
clouds, discomfited, uneasy
Subdued
reminiscences and stolen desires
Weave their
way along broken sidewalks
And among
wistful, shadowy figures
Suppressing
fleeting dreams of yesterday,
While our
threadbare, bare-footed Sybil,
Her sole
possessions in a shopping cart,
Divine of
the Wrath to come, crying,
“Spare some tears, spare
some tears, please.”
But change
there is in abundance
Of
compassion there is a dearth.
As with parched and barren hearts
A legion of
dried up eyes stare,
Sightless, seeing
but not seeing,
Instead, judging the malodorous,
The dispossessed
child, too early an adult,
As she
pleads, "Please, spare some tears."
…
“Spare some tears,… please.”
By
Ric
Couchman
November
Fifth
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