The simple fruit the body once begot
To please the supplicating year’s poor sky,
Who pleaded tearful, nor did have a plot
For bare escapes the heart could dignify,
Lived and lost against the winter season
The final nutrient from tastes divine;
Lost and lived to seek a higher reason
How loss may give if loss may life define.
Yet if emptiness be the better cure
For living by a heart that lives outside,
Fulfillment be made of some knowledge pure
When the loss is staved by powers untried.
For tried again, life asks a better word,
And speaks of loss what loss may speak absurd.
Douglas Thornton is a poet and English teacher living in France.
