Swan Song Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

(For Diana who made the right decision)

The past is just behind us as it ambulates with narrow
gaits while the morrow waves in the far, far distance.
My mind wrestles, in vain, against memories of a heart
hitched to another by that ancient tie called romance,
speaking a language fathomed only by those who love purely,
denounced as obscene by the bigoted magistrate of decency.
Each of us was bound to other people by legal cords, like
death-row inmates to whom liberty is a desperate entreaty.

We lived in a world where seeking one’s bliss was immorality.
Putting up a charade in a hollow union was a priceless virtue.
How many more of the world’s billion people ached as we did,
who cried over a duplicitous culture that they could not subdue?
Ours was a story of a nourished thicket of imperishable love
bearing a farfetched resemblance to disparaged debauchery.
Two souls claimed fair shares of halcyon contentment, publicly
condemned as self-seeking by the imposing edifice of morality.

Like sturdy bushes of weeds in a wide bed of pink roses,
interlopers invaded our world and made it too narrow.
Fingers pointed at us, thorns of judgment had stuck out,
they shot at us and we collapsed like a fallen sparrow.
You reached for me as a soldier in war to a comrade
I whispered to your ears but I didn’t recognize my voice,
I never thought my lips would utter the lonely word to you
But, forgive me, the law of scruples gave me no choice-

Goodbye…

-29 November 2004