I Have Climbed Up The Mountain Of Despair Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

I have climbed up the mountain of despair
Oft – too oft perhaps for me
Too many bitter cups of grief I drunk
Too few the days of calm I joyed.

My flower of youth I wasted more
Than time and age could
Too many bitter cups of grief I drunk
Too few the days of calm I joyed.

Too many nights of weirdness I had
When bad dreams chased all sleep away:
And the black firmament like a cold wall
Smiled at me where’er I trod and went
Railing and deriding my despair.

Too many storms of green my vessel has
Weathered and been buffeted into
Too many a water wraith and ghost
Saw I in my mountain of despair:

Too many a field with corpses have I dreamed
Strewn and divided all irregular:
Too many a stormy sea with corpses I
Have dreamed swollen and strewn amidst the wrecks:
Too many a field with crosses in rows decked
And yew-clad cemeteries solitaire I dreamed.

Too many a monster new unheard unseen
By previous eyes or ears have I met
To many a deed and mishap have I been
Nor have been spared a son’s grief and despair
And now my father lies low in earth.

And now it seems that few black days remain
And blacker days on black days follow suit
Pointing with every day a-down and down:

My heart now too hard for tears is; my eyes
Are dry as desert sands or milked breasts
My throat is parched with the last dryness weird.
I have ascended the mountain of despair.