The Riddle Master Poem by Terence George Craddock (Spectral Images and Images Of Light)

The Riddle Master
asked
a woman struggling
in a lost
loveless marriage.

This paradoxical
necessary
philosophical
inquiring riddle!


“If the longed for lover
is of good honourable heart;
gave everything
while he had nothing;
gave all he had ever gotten
proving repeatedly;
how precious is a noble heart...

why then did the man
who had everything;
give nothing at all? ”


“For that man who took
your everything;
you poured out lovingly;
love from the depths;
defining your heart.”

“Then you twisted your soul
he called you a bore,
humiliated you
while steadily stealing,
your innocence;
twisting the knife
cruelly more and more.”


“Why then
are you still with
the man
who took everything? ”

“The man
who came with
the career and luxury car.”


The answer is ever locked
within many years of marriage,
a couple of children
a house full of memories,
a long history of knowing
each other intimately;
for such a long long time.


For the young, single, and carefree fool,
the appeal of attentive flashy fraud courting;
proves to be a fatal irresistible force;
that must burn out youth’s passion painfully.


Now you console yourself with allure of the material
shopping friends, your children, and an old old saying;
‘better the devil you know, than the one you don’t’
don’t you know your children will leave, they grow?


Copyright © Terence George Craddock
Written in January 2000 on the 9.1.2000.