When Love Takes Poem by Barry Middleton

when love steals the sun
and every beam of light
has vanished in the cloud
the moon avows the night

the melancholic fog
then lifts its dreary head
and those who sleep by day
arise as from the dead

stars are frail pretenders
in blue and purple gloom
their light beyond the reach
of every shuttered room

when love has taken all
and leaves us in the dark
the day is emptiness
the night without a spark

and in this dismal world
many lose their way
while darkness lingers on
though it be night or day