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9th February, 2024

Friday Poem – ‘Last Poem for Sarah’ by John Powell Ward

Close up photograph of a white rose

In honour of Valentine’s Day on 14th February, this week’s Friday Poem is the opening page of ‘Last Poem for Sarah’, a long poem by John Powell Ward from his pamphlet Last Poem for Sarah & Other Poems.

Last Poem for Sarah
Five years lost since that cruel day.
How down here even to start
an even quarter-worth of rhyme?
Maybe dream of you beside....
To say I can’t find what to say
declares the idiocy, the hurt
that fills each instant of the time
to linger mile on mile ahead.
I try to think of you as here,
but absence is a careful friend.
Demanding me to live without
the homes we shared, yet also see
new entities like lack of fear;
best ways to face the long time’s end
alone, still married, separate.
Best that a given, “no self-pity”
being the theme, over-sublime
and not some poet’s keening here.
Everything said here is true.
Banality of language yes
but such is how to steep the time
of week and day and every year
when I can feel for only you.
Rough method of recalling bliss....
I am blank page. You are blank page.
We start again not having finished.
There is a level curious curling
sweetly hung in air above you
so I recall that smitten rage
across your heart, full, undiminished.
The plain sky was an oyster-pearling;
out-of-date; eternal; love you.