Suddenly Very Empty Is My Life. (Italian Sonnet) Poem by Gert Strydom

(after Edith Nesbit)

After the first decent shower of rain
the roses flower red, yellow and white
and their fragrance is a sweet delight
while you do in all of my thoughts remain

You halting our marriage brought me pain
and I dream of you asleep alone at night,
do remember poems you did to me write
and wonder if you want to start again?

Suddenly very empty is my life.
A barbet pecks on the newly mown lawn.
It's as if you do me not in your life need,
as if you do not want to be my wife.
I see the stars appear on a chilly dawn
and empty seems all the poems that I read.

[Reference: "A tragedy" by Edith Nesbit.

Poet's note: I do not think that this great poem by Edith Nesbit is well known and for that reason I am quoting it here:

"A tragedy" by Edith Nesbit

"Among his books he sits all day
to think and read and write;
he does not smell the new-mown hay,
the roses red and white."

"I walk among them all alone,
his silly, stupid wife;
the world seems tasteless, dead and done;
an empty thing is life."

"At night his window casts a square
of light upon the lawn;
I sometimes walk and watch it there
until the chill of dawn."

"I have no brain to understand
the books he loves to read;
I only have a heart and hand
he does not seem to need."

"He calls me ‘Child' - lays on my hair
thin fingers, cold and mild;
Oh! God of Love, who answers prayer,
I wish I were a child! "

"and no one sees and no one knows
(he least would know or see) ,
that ere Love gathers next year's rose
death will have gathered me."]
© Gert Strydom