In a dying desert lost,
Wandering long by paths unknown,
Our lives are tempests’ victims, blown
As if dry leaves detached and tossed.
Forty years, or eighty years
For we who by a gift are strong;
Yet even these we pass along
As sad Cordelias, or Lears.
We’re like some harassed beast, forlorn,
Chased by his shadows, and his fear
That only wastelands linger here,
And all too close death’s final bourn.
When sometime in that aimless thought
A voice would come unto our ear,
It’s in the nameless wind we hear
A hint of what we’d vainly sought.
It’s in the silence of the night.
Under starless sullen sky,
Sadness stumbles –who knows why?-
Upon a way, a path, a light.
Oh we who walk in long despair
We voyagers of desert sands,
Looking beyond these wasted lands
Wishing how ourselves to spare,
Walk we away! Walk hard and far
Over deserts’ shifting sands;
Our pathways be for other lands,
Nostalgia be for us our star.
—
© Bruce Wren, 2015
Note
The poem was inspired by a quote:
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” – C. S. Lewis