‘It’s not that I wanted to leave,’ he wrote,
On a scrap they later found,
‘Just that the stress was too intense,
You drove me into the ground.
You’re like a terrier, won’t let go
Til you drive us all to tears,
You have to worry the same old thing
You’ve clung to your chest for years.’

‘It’s not as if you can let things go
When you’ve lashed, and whipped and scourged,
You won’t let the pain just go away
Though I’ve pleaded, and I’ve urged.
I’ve read the letters you wrote before
And it’s word for word the same,
You said you were writing your demons out
But I see that nothing’s changed.’

‘When will you learn that a man’s a man
With his rights and wrongs intact,
You can’t go changing a leopard’s spots
With your mouth, and that’s a fact,
You share your misery every day
Til it’s all far too intense,
You think your way is the only way
And allow no recompense.’

‘Why did I ever stick with you?’
I ask of the stars above,
‘The answer comes, as it does with you,
‘I stayed for the sake of love!’
What is this love but a trail of pain
From a scar that will never heal,
That rakes the ashes, over again
Til our love can’t see or feel.’

‘It’s not that I wanted to leave,’ he wrote,
‘But it’s better for you and I,
There must be someone better for you
And I’ll put my faith in the sky.’
He’d dipped his pen for the final time
As despair had come in a flood,
And she had muttered, ‘I don’t know why,’
That he’d signed his name in blood.

David Lewis Paget