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Within our town the shutters drawn
Tell tales without our words
No prescience could yet have barred
Such crimes as here occurred
Where once mere kindness might have lived
Companion to our hearts
Here now the winter’s deeper chill
Ensures such warmth departs
And had you loved and had I felt
An echo of such joy
We could have healed our age-old rift
With greater arts employed
We could at last have stilled the sound
Betrayal’s bitter cry
And in redemption yet have found
New rules we could live by
But anger seethes behind the eyes
Of all who pass this way
And where such sunlight might yet fall
All’s desolate and grey
We might have made a bargain yet
And salvaged here some truth
But wars within are never clear
No victory for proof
These are such things as we surmise
Ere long lest we forget
All our cold black knowledge rising
That is nothing but regret

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved