Gloved Hands
By A'Yara Stein
Ophelia speaks ...
My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longed to re-deliver ...
—Hamlet, III, 1
You move away from me in light relief,
seen from the outside, the frosted panes
render you recognizable, but changed;
the whorl of your recollection already faint,
failing evidence of me there. No scent by me.
Your own private joys and reasons to shut the door.
Dreams lost to moonlight, days undone by sleep.
The heart's confusion, too wild to touch,
and thick with the corpses of memory.
I collect too many slights to be wise.
They say if nobody dies, it's a comedy.
Honest, I could have gone for
a smaller lesson in loss; it's hard to have
both knowledge and forgetfulness at once.
Me in my fresh faced sorrow, conceding,
a still reluctant figure hovered at the windowsill
and locked in the darkness beneath.
Before I return to lie under the cold waters,
know, you best of all, of how each kiss I gave
was but another stone I put in the hem of my dress.
This is a lovely, elegant, finely crafted poem. The imagery and meaning of the window that runs through the poem is perfectly rendered. I will come back to this poem once and again to learn from its use of detail to evoke something universal.
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I got lost in the expression of feelings and life. Very nice.
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Haunting images. My favorite lines (hard to select):The heart's confusion, too wild to touch/and thick with the corpses of memory
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Very nice.
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