Tony Ullyatt. Three Unrhymed Curtal Sonnets

 

Grief is just love with nowhere to go

Jamie Anderson

 

I

               

It could be tomorrow or in five years’ time.

I’m aware of no schedule I must stick to

and there is no appointment in my diary.

But it’s a meeting I will have to attend

despite my aversion for such gatherings.

The other thing I dislike is surprises

yet when that day arrives, it’s sure to be one.

I’m not afraid of dying you assured me.

Neither am I now you have shown me the way.

Death’s intrusions don’t disrupt time’s steady pulse.

No pause for grief’s needs.

 

 II

             

To those who ask, I say I’m doing well

but to myself I admit I’m lying

because it’s much harder to face harsh fact.

After you died I felt all the blessings

of our life had suddenly been revoked.

If truth be known, I’d have preferred to die

with you. Now life has become much tougher

than all I had known or could imagine.

Your escape from pain’s onslaught comforts me.

Nonetheless the void’s emptiness resounds

as every dawn breaks.

 

 III

 

Whatever the weather, each day begins

with its particular sort of bleakness.

Years ago, there was much we had hoped for.

Now I wake with ever more memories

and gaping emptiness reminding me

of those splendid times we were blessed to share.

If time is the ultimate currency

though we have no access to our accounts

I trust there’ll be enough for me to grieve

in ways worthy of you who graced my life.

The days remain bleak.

 

© Tony Ullyatt, 2023

 

(Hopkins’s curtal sonnet has only ten and a half lines.)