Cry Of Birth by John pepper Clark

Also Read

 

An echo of childhood stalks before me

like evening shadows on the earth,

rolling back into piquant memory

the anguished cry of my birth;

Out of the caverns of nativity

a voice, I little knew as my own

and thought to have shed with infancy,

returns with a sharpness before unknown.

Poor castaways to this darkling shore,

void out of the sea of eternity

and blind, we catch by reflex horror

an instant glimpse, the guilt of our see:

The souls of men are steeped in stupor

who, tenants upon this wild isle unblest,

sleep on, oblivious of its loud nightmare

with wanton motions bedevilling our breast.

All night, through its long reaches and black

I wander as Io, driven by strange passions,

within and out, and for gadfly have at my back

one harrowing shriek of pain and factions 

It comes ceaseless as from the wilderness!

commingled with the vague cogitation

of the sea, its echo of despair and stress

precedes me like a shade to the horizon.