A dark little poem

My afternoon reading turns up this - a maudlin meditation on the failure of a marriage.

Me, I have only very positive experiences of absinthe. I must try and locate some other poems featuring this most excellent of drinks.

The Absinthe Drinker


For years I tried to leave them,
leave them all.
Now they've left me.
Three childish smiles are scars
inside my mind.
She took all three.


My head breaks. The hours
slash my skull to splintered bone.


I wish there was a picture
I could hang to break the sight
of the wall across this room
with its hook of stone.


Where is my Dégas lady?
I carried her for years inside my poems
and hung her on the wall to comfort me.
Somewhere in a box of broken books
she sits, sipping her absinthe.
Now for the first time
I would drink with her.


Patrick Lane (1939- )