Unanswered Pain Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The irrelevant hollow
Pushes from the grave,
The single plot encompasses the world,
A cornucopia in perspiring autumn
Unlooked upon by the young women
The sun dotes upon, hallowing and warming
Them as they go about their shopping,
Followed by many migrating eyes nibbling
On their breasts.

From the graveyard,
That unending necropolis without
Points for definition, I struggle
Both motionless and wordless,
I cannot step beyond, neither
Should I, the language of my position.
My tongue blind and eyes mute,
I know I have always been here,
Defined by the deafness shot down by the
Bright flow of feminine hair
Cascading like a picture book
As she walks along the outside of my boarders,
The black iron bars she never looks
Beyond, her first love a lost sailor
Drowning in the mists swarming the
Perspiring backyards out of her vision.

In order to breathe, I need this
Stationary hunger; I need to have a clear
Line of site to her, but can never move nearer.
I must stay the tree forever at the edge of
Her fertile sea, watching the other men
Disrobe and then to go leaping to swim in her.
Her waves lap against their chests, and they
Taste the salt on their hungered lips.
I know myself by them in her. From where
I watch, I must not say a thing. Remaining
The calm permanence of a lover’s grave,
I find permanence in this unanswered pain.