Tears
The vision starts to liquefy And lower lip to tremble, The voice begins to thicken And features to resemble The back end of plucked chicken, As infant breathing fills the lungs To prime the bawling treble yell, The face and body puce as tongues, Blood beating at the fontanelle, And baby face begins to cry So many different kinds of tears.
The tears distilled into a sonnet, The tears of grief held back for years, Tears of frustration, tears of rage, Tears of if-all-the-world's-a-stage Why aren't I honoured on it. The tears that taste of swallowed pride Or château-bottled suicide, The mimed boohoo behind the hands, The true secretion of the glands That taste of tears, those saline drips Directed by the tongue to lips, The tears that stain the pillowslip And weep the sorry self to sleep.
The orchestra of misery Is such a universal plea I find it idle to believe That only homo sapiens cries To vent its grievances and grieve.
So blow your nose and dry your eyes, Hold out your hand for a surprise, While I remember those that I Deliberately have caused to cry And hope that they forgive me my Predisposition to deny That Jesus wept and so have I.
Duncan Forbes
Previous page
