And Then I Was Lost…. Poem by Richard Blanch

There were shadows in the gardens
That were not statues.
Predatory movement along the pathways
That made me doubt-
Cut off from the bright trust of two insular eyes.

All the heavy drugging of that unknown air
Alone with a dream that was almost a fear-
All the demanded and returned ecstasies
Cannot be forgotten: is that
Ominous or glad?

For they blend and darken with these hauntings
In a mind let slip from a fenced-in certainty
Wandered far from the insistent warden of the Good. Despair
Moves silently on the verges of the paths-
Darkness, flexibly shod, engulfing what is no more my garden.




1968