Face our turmoil,
And rend the world apart!
See where we have felt the stinging pain,
The toil to what has been called love.
Never love and only the survival bought from danger,
I am a man of guilt who is asked to be strong.
I am a man of pain who is asked to be painless.
I am a man of shame who is asked to show himself.
The love from a woman has made a mark,
I show weakness, and it’s seen to be dark.
We both, as lovers, walk upon death
In each’s arms, in failure and desertion.
What am I but the man called misery?
I am not uncertain about the want,
Though, uncertain about the gain,
To what I want, to what will spell paradise.
Oh, my love, walk upon death,
There is no Heaven in this Hell.
There is barely a life to say is a treasure,
I’ve become numb against my sorrow.
And from death, and in life,
All has become black and white.
Strange minutes resort to unbidden strife.
As I seek to make you my wife.
Life, in all its stalking upon death’s ground,
Do we stand upon someone’s grave,
On the street, where we wave
To taxis and workers in their frenzy?
Face me, dear one, and see my pain,
See how it soaks me down,
See how the future faces the West,
And the past falls to the East,
Backwards in confusion harmonic,
In what I am destined to be.
Modern Romanticism 