Once I cared for people who were old
Who wet themselves and felt the winter cold
I gave them baths and washed their backs and fronts
Helped them to get dressed and zip their pants

I made them pots of tea and gave them cake
I gave them dinner on a china plate
I listened to their stories of the past
An unknown world of war and terrors vast

And if they cried I’d wipe away their tears
Talk to them till sorrow disappeared
I’d do the washing up and clean the knives
The women missed their being someone’s wife

Now I am old and I have realised
I really had no feel for what it’s like.

Let me paint my house with color soft.

Still as snowflakes lying in a drift

Let me paint my house in colours mute

That lovers die I cannot now dispute.

As stark as ghosts are in an empty lift.

The end of life is startling it is swift.

Death came here and touched his unkissed lips

I am lonely are the lights go out.

I am frightened I won’t know the route

Now my heart is bleeding it is ripped

Lie beside me lover in the moss

Paint my face with colours still and soft

I see you in the mist and I am lost.

What we pay is more than any cost.

His absence left an empty open cut
Where was my blood that should have made a crust?
The weeping wound must heal from bottom up
The healing force is life and others’ love
Those who touch us gently without lust
His absence still an empty open cut
Slowly cells harmonious in this rut
Do their work and live as all things must
The weeping wound can heal from bottom up
Meanwhile my immunity has guts
Keeping off bacteria and dust
In his absence. now a hollow slit
Tears fly horizontal,eyes are shut
Time goes slow and heavy weights oppress
The weeping wound shall heal if I have grit
Bring me wild flowers from the Clevelands plucked
Give me nectar where the wild bees suck
His presence was a comfort,laughter-lit
The wound heals, oh, the love will never stop

I wrote this after I had an operation on my arm.After the stitches were removed I went to bed.When I awoke there was a big open slit in my arm.It did heal after several weeks

Y

My sister painted this picture a few months ago.

Oh,melancholy you are always near.

http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/28/against-happiness-melancholy-wilson/

“The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.”– Alain de Botton

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/weekinreview/27grief.html

Meghan O’Rourke: You know, writing has always been the way I make sense of the world. It’s a kind of stay against dread, and chaos. My mother was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer in 2006; she was 53, and I was 30. As her disease progressed, I found myself writing down all the experiences we had — the day she got giddily high on morphine at the doctor’s office; the afternoon we talked, painfully, about her upcoming death. It helped me externalize what was happening. After she died, I kept writing — and reading — trying to understand or just get a handle on grief, which was different from what I thought it’d be. It wasn’t merely sadness; I was full of nostalgia for my childhood, obsessed with my dream life and had a hard time sleeping or focusing on anything but my memories. Il

J

Against sadness:no-one here can weep
Nor lounge about in melancholy deep.
Was Van Gogh senseless to permit his muse.
For his masterpieces ,was the price too steep?
We see the yellow chair but not his views
Nor his mind where technique made such leaps.
Nor was his journey broadcast on the news.
Against sadness.

Happiness or joy is hard to find
When we rest, the News preys on our minds
Yet some are cold towards the slaughtered priest
His nose a beak of bone in old face lined
Now Muslims go to Mass and join Christ’s feast
Against sadness.

What rages in the mind make men kill thus?
In Syrian wars the innocents fare worse.
But these are our near neighbours so we weep
And wonder how to end the frightening curse
The sins we once committed hold us deep
We hold our hands out wanting to be nursed
Against sadness