Who are these loved ones
who cannot begin to mend?

If I could see them,
brilliantly rejected -
like wimping ships
dropped under buccaneering waters,
watch the slow horizons empty -
I might smile.

But if I see
the hawthorn creak with buds
a joy unfolds to tempt me,
withers with a bare simplicity.

The world is narrowed to a single sound:
your crying in an empty room.