I Was Born One Day

I was born one day when God was ill
Now there is a hole in my metaphysical
Air no one could touch, no one could
Hope to touch for fear of repetition,
The kind of slave to the beginning
Of heartbeats that blister into memory
Time after time after time.

I was born one day when God was ill.
Yet neither Fate nor Cupid cast glances at me,
Remarked or smiled at Christ's dead body,
Like me. Now I have become invisible, an embarrassment
Of sorts that leads nowhere, nothing worth
Saving, nothing worth taking as demons stumble
Out of the door with gifts for themselves
From my home, from the children's home
Who to me mean the world for I was born
One day when God was ill.

And you did not ask after my health
And you found yourself riches in the house
Where I have not been for seven weeks now,
The doctors saying that all is well
I should be home for tea, my wrists
Strapped. Yet worst of all is the sad sight of apprehension
In your eyes, the fallen look of reluctance
That somehow gets the better of you,
Trailing through midnights backwards
As I recall your youth, my own youth
Once loving and loved but now changed
Into a kind of pain that delivers pains
To the heart, the heart and not the soul,
Nothing but declamatory memories to get
Me through the night, those, and as I drift
To sleep Beethoven, I walking through
Some other skies or explosions,
The first black hole sucking in Canada
Huge as ephemeral gods ready to devour

As I was born one day when God
Was seriously ill.

John Cornwall