One for Valentine’s day from new member Barrie?
THE END OF A LOVE AFFAIR
BARRIE PURNELL
We met by chance it was a brief encounter just one night
We talked and laughed and kissed goodbye and said we’d write
Words thrown into the darkness not to be examined in the light
But her letter told me of her love in words so erudite
They broke through my defences like a stick of gelignite
So from that chance encounter a lifetime love affair took flight
We stole time for days together nights we couldn’t say goodbye
We hid inside each others hearts oblivious to passers by
I told her I would always make her happy and never make her cry
I would give her everything I had and never ask her why
And that from all previous lovers my bonds I would untie
And all my secret places I would let her occupy
She soon knew all about me understood everything I said
She had the key to thoughts I kept locked up in my head
Dylan’s words became the soundtrack to our lives when newly wed
She played me Leonard Cohen’s songs when we lay together in our bed
We were living in the moment no thought of what might lie ahead
We pushed away reality and wrapped ourselves in youth instead
Our love was all embracing it was a selfish love I know
No time for family or friends or that nightly TV show
Pursuing our ambitions we watched our fortunes grow
Searching for that croc of gold at the end of life’s rainbow
So as years passed and ambitions faded how were we to know
That we’d find just what we’d dreamed of that long long time ago
We had all of those possessions we’d once looked at from afar
A big house with indoor swimming pool and a silken lined boudoir
The chairs they were by Chippendale with a walnut escritoire
On the wall a painting by Rossetti we purchased in Dunbar
With gold and silver jewellery from an Istanbul bazaar
And outside in the garage a big black Bentley car
But when I lost my love those dreams dissolved in the cold November rain
Her photographs and my memories are now all that remain
To remind me of those sunnier times that I never can regain
I was left feeling like an addict who’s deprived of his cocaine
All those sympathetic words raised tears I struggled to contain
Just realising that my life would never be the same again
Oh if life could only stay the same but that’s never going to be
Times thief steals love from everyone this time his victim’s me
The pain of loneliness or death is just a matter of degree
The night ignores my cries for help it is my enemy
A dark crevasse down which I fall where no one hears my plea
Only when we masquerade as lovers in my dreams am I set free
There are no words at my despair at losing her for good
Does it matter now I loved her and did everything I could?
And if to bring her back I shout her name into the graveyard’s wood
Just an echo of my voice comes back like I always knew it would
We rarely see him coming that reaper with his scythe and with his hood
And if we did would he know of our grief would he have understood?
Immortality is not for us we are just nature’s slave
It wields a random hand when selecting who’s next for the grave
However many deeds of kindness done or sinners we forgave
However many penances we take to the Cardinal’s conclave
But I can’t stop the tears of sadness for a love I could not save
And though I promised my love many things I never promised to be brave
I now look enviously at young lovers like some secretive voyeur
Time once a thief of love is now a devious saboteur
Distorting all my images of love so they all fade and blur
But my love was not so brief that I can forget how we once were
Yet a day will come, as if by accident, when I will not speak about her
Even once — and this the last line I will write her
So brave the words that describe this loss of life love and pain
just leaving time that will never be the same.
Thank you and
well done
Once again, Barry, an almost faultless piece of prose poetry that effortlessly conveys one of the more harrowing realities of a finite life: the loss of a loved one.
Thank you, Barry. You continue to amaze me.
Barrie, this poem is beautiful. I wept all the way through to the end.