Poem Of The Day: Cry Of Birth By J.P Clark

An echo of childhood stalks before me
like evening shadows on the earth,
rolling back into piquant memory
the anguished cry of my birth;

Out of the caverns of nativity
a voice, I little knew as my own
and thought to have shed with infancy, 
returns with a sharpness before unknown. 

Poor castaways to this darkling shore,
void out of the sea of eternity
and blind, we catch by reflex horror
an instant glimpse, the guilt of our see:

The souls of men are steeped in stupor
who, tenants upon this wild isle unblest,
sleep on, oblivious of its loud nightmare
with wanton motions bedeviling our breast.

All night, through its long reaches and black
I wander as lo, driven by strange passions,
within and out, and for gadfly have at my back
one harrowing shriek of pains and factions -

It comes ceaseless as from the wilderness
commingled with the vague cogitation
of the sea, its echo of despair and stress
precedes me like a shade to the horizon.

J.P Clark