EMPTINESS

The day sickens into the lakes

        The colour that its pallor wears.

A loss of outline overtakes

        The landscape, and the horizon bears

Like a defeated flag the dim

Purposelessness of its dead rim.

Let my heart forsake everything.

        I shall be richer by all I.

Every breath, each passing wing

        Takes me from myself. The whole sky

Eats into my self‑consciousness

And detracts from my true distress.

For my true sorrow is not that

        The day is sad as I am sad,

But that no moment can abate

        The pain that I but pain have had

To take with me and see and feel

While life goes by like a mere wheel.

No: vaguer things than skies and plains

        Are dark and lowered o'er in me;

My sorrows are more empty pains

        Than of which plains can symbols be;

And my void weight of life and self

Resembles nothing but itself.