The day you died my heart broke
But so did my chains

No longer to see your eyes full of threat
Where once they filled with love

No longer to fear your decision of my failure
When once I was admired

No longer to tread on eggshells around you
For fear of abuse

I am free
And yet I will never be

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate --
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

I pull the curtains over tight so the
sticky light will not let in the morning.
I miss waking up in Europe with the
strange European light coming in pouring
in the narrow windows of Dutch Tower
houses or busy Berlin apartment
streets with kebabs cooking and kids crying
the stillness of frosty Dublin suburbs
in the winters and the bite of the air
on bare cheeks and knuckles and the eerie
sound of invisible birds and clock towers belling on Sundays resonating in the crystal air.

And I start thinking about all the things I never did which is sometimes worse than thinking about all the things I have done