Cataract

Further now than ever from the dearness lost,
The light ebbs, swallowed by the darkness.
The sable field and the letter lost,
Written, but unsent.

Atumble on the forsaken tide
the nausea comes in waves,
Only now, the loss alone abides.

Sung over the frozen falls,
the barrel punctured by noteless staves,
The roar of the blinding cataract
Deafens the heart’s vision.

But up it pops, intact, bobbing along
with the flotsam and the jetsam.
And in the darkness of the hogshead
All is just the rush of undiffused memory.

There, by, goes another love, lost and drowned.
Goggle-eyed, black and bloated
When at last found in the eddying downstream
Not so very far from the push-off point.