Friend

Friend
by Gideon Burton
an imitation of Shakespeare's sonnet #30 (below)

The memory is not so dear a friend.
What's passed, not past, but scoring fresh the skin
of tender thoughts, disquieted and bent
to know the present scabs to be so thin.
For I have laughed with friends who now are mute
and wasted in the greedy earth. However close,
receding, sinking down beyond the roots,
beyond the teary mist that from me flows.
And I have mourned, not only for their passing,
but that I let a moment's hesitation
divert me from forgiveness I was asking.
There might have been a reconciliation.
   And yet one friend I brazenly did seek,
   who brings me back from reveries so bleak.

_____________________________________

Sonnet 30
William Shakespeare

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Lohb is back...