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“No artist tolerates reality.” Friedrich Nietzsche
I thank my lucky stars that I’m a poet. Because I’m a poet I’m somehow able to deal with life, no matter how painful it is.
The last three years have been very painful for me. My wife, Ann, was part of me. Losing her has been like losing myself.
I said to a colleague early on after Ann died that I had nothing to be ashamed of. And I think that is key to my survival. I don’t give myself a hard time for having a hard time. I don’t blame myself for my grief.
I’m still grieving. Deeply. We have defensive mechanisms that blunt our experience of pain. I am still, gradually, shaking off this protective numbness, and this means that my grief still feels raw.
They call it Prolonged Grief Disorder. Ha ha! It should be called Prolonged Grief Robustness.
Despite my grief, or maybe because of it, I’m open to new romance. I fell for a lovely lady two months ago and have written the following piece. Click on the title for the sung version.
Cinderella
I’ll never ever ever forget
that November night we met.
I had you sitting next to me at our table, Emma.
When I turned round in my chair,
I was thrilled to find you there.
I realised you were a real-life Cinderella.
There was nothing I could do
but declare my love for you
and the fact that we’re meant to be together.
It’s been such a long time since
I last played the role of Prince.
Hand me back that identity for ever.
Why don’t we recover the identity
of the lovers we were meant to be?
My cousin Steve has had a hard time understanding this love song as the lady in question rejected my advances shortly after we’d met.
“I thought you’d moved on,” he wrote.
I responded: “Poets never move on. That’s why they’re poets.”
This piece is more about me than it is about Emma. She was kind enough to agree with me that my making a move on a woman for the first time in almost 40 years was a very positive step.