Sweet Sorrow Poem by Mary Champion

I would part from him one hundred times
to hear again, the tender ache of longing in his voice,
that spoke so fervently of love -
which I had never guessed at
in all the years I knew him.
If only he had spoken -
undammed the flood of passion
that might have swept us both to ecstasy.
But we had passed those segregated years
divided by the barriers
that neither of us recognised or built,
both sensing some great absence in our lives
we could not name,
although it permeated all the space between us.
Yet we could not admit
that love could ever live
between two souls as disparate as ours -
such love that could not be acknowledged -
not even to ourselves.
‘Twas only when that sweet farewell was spoken
that we, who had been blind,
were made to see.