First Day of March

I Am!
BY JOHN CLARE
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

John Clare was known as the peasant poet, and although he met with early success; in later life, he struggled both professionally and personally. The poem, ‘I Am’ was written in 1848. Written from the heart of his difficulties, it reminds me, that even in darkest times, we are not alone, and there is solace and comfort to be found in poetry and creativity.

My reply:

I am

a home of bone blood and nerves,
a sum of golden hours gone.

I am a book of stories told, silver 
dreams unsaid, yet more unsung.

A subtraction of failed ambition,
salted labours run aground.

I am alone, stand with me;
shelter in harbour of sky and rain. 

Shereen Abdallah©