When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

if you really think about it,
are you even sad?
all this dark poetry and old melancholy ballads
and red black lines on your wrist,
is that even you?
or are you so preoccupied with being sad that
a moment of joy passes by and you don't even savour it
you make no attempts to grab it and hold on to it
and it just leaves
what must I do to make you believe
that this world may be
a cold, dark place
but there is always one ray of hope
and it flickers
it flickers within you.
- a.g.

This is my story.
Do not assume that you
Are the hero, even though

I dedicated a lot of

Lengthy chapters to you.

You are just a
Leaf passing through,
Leaving a slight impression

On a few pages and

A pop of colour among

Some black and white words.

You are a spot of blue ink

Left in the corner, as I wrote

Quickly and passionately

On white blank pages.

You are the muse I loved

Enough to write into my story
And spend time nurturing,
Creating something beautiful
However long it may have lasted.

But do not forget,
Even for a second that

This is my story.

However incomplete or

nonsensical it may seem.
However narcissistic I may sound.
How many ever hours

I spent crafting it.

Rough

Draft

Over

Rough

Draft.
**
This is my story.