THROUGH MY EYES -
BRAHMS’S HIDDEN POEM (1857)

Women I love with my heart and soul
But I am not made for matrimony
A domestic life and its trappings
Would destroy my creativity.

Clara I would protect and worship
With my life - she is perfection -
Love I would blemish and defile
If I were to mention - ‘Give me your affection’.

Ah, my beloved Robert is gone
In his tomb my heart is interned
My mentor, my friend, my inspiration
Alas, how little I gave my master in return.

My music is Robert and Clara
Our souls are by destiny wrought
History shall remember
But would understand us not.

[The reference to Robert is Robert Schumann (1810- 1856) and Clara, his wife (1819-1896). Johannes Brahms lived from 1833-1897.]

The moon comes to me,
at once with melancholy.
Like old friends.

perhaps i linger in the perhaps
perhaps i shouldn’t
a limbo in which i await
full of disastrous wonder
a beautiful sense of denial
perhaps i linger in the perhaps
the perhaps of us
the knowing of no hope
of no trust
but perhaps
it could happen
just maybe one day
I will stop lingering
in the perhaps of us

Once, I used to gaze at the dark moon,
I wandered through the abyss,
I saw the snake’s skin,
My heart was not this dark,
I felt more love,
I read Beddoes,
Everything has grown colder.

I’m self aware
And yet my brain sometimes leaves me in a unconscious state of mind
I have seen my wrongdoings played out before and it was not a pretty sight
But I also felt like some wrongdoings of mine have caused damage to my life and it’ll only be too late for me to realize it later on
I have become a judge of my actions
And a witness of what was played out