Song For Yourself Poem by Micer Ambrosius

Song for Yourself

Just there where you are
is okay, and it’s fine;
that’s how you must be
for the moment - on the
margins of pain waiting
for hope, looking at love
in the eyes of another

And you know all too well
what this means, that you’re
looking for love, the thing
that will heal, give you yourself
making it real, wake you from
sleep, touch you alive, open
your heart to the pain of
another

You’ve been where you are
all your life in a dream
of desire, wanting to have
what you lacked in your lover

Your burden was you,
working it through, hearing
the words you find that
belong to all others

So when you let go
in your need, in the night,
where there’s no-one to judge you -
begging for space in your life
that will serve to inhabit:
singing your heart out in silence
aloud with the cries of
untraceable longing -

there’s no telling where
confession of grace
is now leading. Going alone
along with the rest of the world
too shattered to ask why
the meaning of trying was
failing. Laughing to see
the limits of strength,

what little you’re after,
vanish away. Dearest my own,
who never was known,
calling the name of the one
who can only encompass the whole
of creation; ask it again,
calling in pain, for what
is not yet given

You’re what you’ve become
The humour and joy are
your sorrow and heartbreak

What you regret is the hurt
that you’ve caused, exhaustion
and fury and horror. So many
years that have gone without
trace - leaving you bare -

More or less whole; learning
to cope, life after hope,
needy and flowing desire,
body on fire; reaching to
want, lonely and acheing
and proud, having survived,
bearing the price without
rancour - o, precious surprize!

There wasn’t a chance to
grow all by yourself -
you had to let in everyone else -
it all belonged - you were all theirs -
each was the other’s. None of us
felt we could go on any more
acting as though we were I,
someone to hold and possess,
sister and brother

If there never was more
than your needing and cries
bitter and sweet in your flesh,
with the words you can’t utter:
sing and dance, in your heart
for the blessing and power. For
by day, acrid with dreams, openly
baring, sharing your weakness around,
it’s the end of self-lying

I’m like you, and rejoice, though
I lack and I struggle. It gives me
the courage to laugh at my folly

What you’ve made of your life is a trace
on the water. No-one can know how you
strive with the things you can’t conquer

There is our bond, and our token of trying

When we dare and begin in fondest
compassion - show and say what we
mean, no longer in hiding - child
and friend to the years, faithful
loyal and true to yourself above
others - that’s bonding and free,
for ever, and after. There's my
heart and my soul under the armour.


1989