A Good-bye Hurts.



"To part at last
     without kiss,
 Beside the haystack
      in the floods."
        -William Morris.

I cannot give you
   reasons enough,
I do not myself
   understand

The loud lover,
     praying in sin,
Or the pain of those
     who sin in prayer.

A good-bye hurts a
    hundred times more,
Emptying the soul,
    embittering the heart,

Much more than a fatal
   spearwound would.
The happy love is flown,
    a by-gone glow;

Locked in memory's
    gloomy corridors;
A mere past, life
   imprisoned in grief;

Robbed of fulfillment,
    future condemned
      to tears,
Gazing sadly over the
   prey of previous
     existence.

A good-bye hurts.

About this poem

This poem was the poet's farewell to a years-long love relationship--a farewell which, though he at first thought it was within 'normal' limits of things as routine, nonetheless proved too shocking to the poet in heart with its "true" finale; thus the poet's implicit reflecting upon life overall by compare-in/compare-out analogy.

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Written on December 12, 1990

Submitted by hakimk.60811 on August 06, 2023

37 sec read
2

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAXXB XXXX XXXX CXXX XXXX AXXX XXXCBX X
Closest metre Iambic dimeter
Characters 656
Words 123
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 1

Hakim H. Kassim.

Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, the poet was raised in a politically prominent family; yet in his early teens, the poet and his family emigrated to the United States, where the poet lived for nearly two decades. Kassim started writing and publishing poetry while in junior college, at a relatively young age, and almost spontaneously fell with poets and poems, and has so been ever since; particularly the Romantic poets--William Wordsworth, George Gordon, Lord Byron, John Keats and Percy Shelley--drew his attention and engaged hìs intellect, so much so that, to this day, they represent more or less 'the epitome' of what Poesy means to him.The poet now lives in his land of birth and works as a freelance journalist and writer. Kassim is currently preparing manuscript of what he hopes to be his first book of poetry; the poet feels a particular attachment to John Keats and Percy Shelley for their vehement opposition to the inhumane effects on ordinary people such as the consequences of industrial development in their lifetimes–and reminds us that technological progress today does the same: ‘Weep, for the world is wrong!’ (emphasis supplied) (Percy Shelley, “Dirge”) more…

All Hakim H. Kassim. poems | Hakim H. Kassim. Books

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