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Merci pour le John Clare On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, maria fletcher wrote: > The fear that the writing of poetry is an antidote to the contemporary fear > of obscurity. > > To be read but not remembered. > To read yet not be heard. > > The fear that the writing of poetry is an exclusive passion - that in > choosing this passion you have not wasted your life, nor denied others. > > To know this and to write is perhaps to overcome the fear of writing itself. > > maria > > I am - John Clare > > I am - yet what I am, none cares or knows; > My friends forsake me like a memory lost:- > I am the self-consumer of my woes;- > They rise and vanish in oblivion's host, > Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes:- > And yet I am, and live - like vapours tost > > Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,- > Into the living sea of waking dreams, > Where there is neither sense of life or joys, > But the vast shipwreck of my lifes esteems; > Even the dearest, that I love the best > Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest. > > I long for scenes, where man hath never trod > A place where woman never smiled or wept > There to abide with my Creator, God; > And sleep as I in childhood, sweetly slept, > Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie, > The grass below - above the vaulted sky. >