Vetus Flamma

That love that once was nearest to my heart

And pressed against my arm and forehead too

Is gone and you went with it.  We are two.

You have your legends, I have an empty heart,

And in the quieted pounding of this heart

I hear the future I awaken to.

Night falls each dawn and stays a week or two

And all there is to eat is my own heart.

I nurse a broken love, a broken word,

And cannot bring myself to say your name,

But keep the smallest remnant of your word

To ornament my door with what was lost.

Unaging ghost, you never said your name—

You only came to wrestle, and I lost.

Robert Mezey

From Collected Poems: 1952-1999, University of
Arkansas Press, © 2000.  Reprinted by permission
of the author.