This poem is written in a style that is kind of strange, you need to keep the lines flowing, it doesn't have a definite rhythm, it's not meant to. Read it almost as if it were prose.
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A Valediction to Life
Today I learned something,
A lesson not taught in seminaries,
Not even in life do most encounter its sting.
And yet to most, it drives us, it’s that unknown;
That intangible, fathomless push – with no haven.
The words it writ and prayers it carries,
Left cold with messenger craven.
I watched as people trudged
The streets, a strangely lonely throng,
For none saw the other, none knew yet still they judged
That stranger for the pain they held within themselves.
I walked the further, and on it went,
My time in society, I thought ill spent,
But wings above the brow of grey appeared,
And there my private lesson took flight,
My eyes, his strife, they peered.
The man with wings was on his knees,
His wrist a mess of gauze and tape,
Soaked with scarlet woe.
That sobbing mass in sorry shape;
His voice aquake he grovelled there,
Hands interwoven in knots of prayer.
Yet contention flowed from ‘twixt those parch’ed lips,
As to his fists, then to the ground he dropped
His head, then rose those tearful eyes,
To those of another,
To what other I found surprise.
While he, in thoughtful dapper did reside,
His patron wrapped haphazardly,
In rages and vagabond trappings,
Slouched with the oppression of society,
Hung in ghastly silence, an odd propriety.
Yet still that man sobbed at his feet,
But stranger still, I watched his wings,
They withered, upon his back.
The man in rude attire,
With sordid demeanour and strife strewn features,
Had seen too many day and night,
Without shelter from the blight.
As wax and wane the moon does grow,
This man lived mired,
So few his goals, but one he desired.
And at his toes it would seem,
A single spark,
A sole adherence, of hope.
It wept, he wept, but still he confided,
A companion to sorrow, mistreatment and err,
He rambled of life and injustice.
Of his wife, he spoke his most odious words,
But more to an absence, an absence of her,
“My life is in shambles, what am I to do?
My wife, she has left me… my little one too.”
“But naught I’ve to live for,” he lifted his hand,
Protruding his bandaged wrist,
The life still seeped from beneath the wrappings and fell
To meet with its kin, vivacious but bland,
Testament to a lost life, but not a life of loss,
Though it seamed he perceived thus.
“I loved her most dearly, no feelings contend,
And gone with my daughter, my life’s at an end.
I’ll finish it now... God damn the villainy!”
A valediction to life, I thought those words were his last,
He revealed a blade and pulled back the dressings,
Then the hand of the vagrant, took that man’s fist
And pulled away the knife,
His eyes possessed a fire in them now,
He scorned that man’s strife.
As fist in hand, the ragged man shifted,
He tossed aside the blade,
No variance in deviance, he straightened his form,
I saw that the mourner’s wings no longer existed;
But something I never expected to see,
Made my heart fumble, as protruding now,
From the old beggar’s back, stumps of new wings came to be.
Thus he spoke, a voice bold, not withdrawn or timid,
As a voice you’d expect from a man who’s been beaten
By life and its heart, barely tepid,
“You are truly ignorant; I can bear it no longer,
You cry for your life, you whimper,
For that which you had and lost… and to what?
“Did you stumble one day and drop you conviction,
Or loose your lust, or was it all fiction?
A story of love and nothing more, a fabrication?”
Amazed as before, as the wanderer spoke,
Those stubs of perfection took growth!
“No! It was none of these!” The other man cried,
“Then why with such ease did you let it all die?
“You snivel before me, when ‘tis I who have lost my life,
But nay, ‘tis you on your knees.
You are selfish, and arrogant, a piteous thing,
Why didn’t you try harder if you do love your wife?
No discrepancy too large to overcome love,
You couldn’t have tried.
“I have a wife, yes, have, not had,
Yet she died ten years ago now,
But still I hold that eternal affection that brought us together.
She lives in my heart, and still we are married…”
He paused in remembrance, a tender affliction,
The dapper man looked deserted, and strangely aghast.
The rough one spoke forth upon seeing this,
“Look at my life, we shared it,
Not in shame, and we fought to stay together, ‘till my wife I did bury.”
His wings in full splendour, the beggar ascended,
“I join her now, and you to yours must adhere,
You’ll live through those scars; as with love they are mended.”
I haven’t moved from this spot, it’s been hours since then,
With my pen to this paper, still I cannot truly relate,
Yet what I learned is too important not to try.
I shall teach this I think, to others I find in need,
And this lesson I preach,
Will start with these lines,
“Today I learned something,
A lesson not taught in seminaries,
Not even in life do most encounter its sting.”
