Eyes
(6/9/13)
I wrote a poem in April of 2013, entitled 'Heart'. This is an extension of the content of that
poem...It is a letter to a dead man. I had removed it from this blog. It is now time to repost it, but not to rewrite it.
~o~
I never knew you at all. I
wish that I had never set eyes on you and that you had never set eyes on me. I wish that I had never looked into your
eyes. Dead eyes. Eyes that I had tried to breathe and pump
life into. Eyes that follow me,
everywhere I go.
I know hardly anything about you, even though I had to cut all
your clothes off, walk through your flat, glimpse your life, whilst soaked in
your blood. I can’t even look at your name on a screen. I don’t know it. It may seem harsh, but I don’t want to. That is not who I usually am, but here I have
to preserve some sense of order, keep some distance, in a year that has been
catastrophic and full of disorder. I
hope that you understand. I don’t fully
understand it myself. That approach is
alien to me.
Whoever you were, or are, I know that you were someone’s son and
someone’s brother. I know that your
brother wrote fondly of you. I wonder,
as I’m writing, what good or bad things you contributed to the world. For some reason, I have it in my head, that
you were, at times, unsavoury.
I apologise if that seems unfair, or indeed wrong.
Regardless, we have all made poor choices and you didn’t deserve
to lose your life in the manner in which you did. I wish it could have been different. The bounds of human beings and their
behaviour never cease to amaze me. Both
in terms of the good that they bring and the evil that they exhibit.
I know that I tried my best for you. If I could have made it different, I would
have.
I know that a colleague failed you. To say sorry for that seems inane, but I
will.
I don’t know where you are, if there is something, or simply
nothing. I do know that this is the last
time that I will write about you.
‘Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet
of consequences’ – Robert Louis Stevenson
Rest in Peace.
