Three poems of Paul Murray, that fit my current state of mind.

A Note on Human Passion

Sacred or profane
--it does not matter--
one must not anaesthetize
or dull the pain
but instead sustain
the splintered heart's
helpless yet terrifying
and sharp desire
never to be healed
of the wound of living.

--Paul Murray in The Absent Fountain

Seasons

In quick or in slow succession, frost
into fire, fire into frost,
the seasons of the year return
and leave us numb with cold
or warm us, like the seasons of the heart.

But that last season you endured
--your heart’s dark winter—
was so bleak and cold that still
to this day, to this hour,
the frost remains in your blood.

But now is the moment of change,
now the apocalypse.
Today, swept by the winds of another
season, the blossoms
of the fruit trees are ablaze with colour.

Surely it is the end of spring,
the promised summer?
So say “yes” and “yes” again
to this moment
while it turns, for soon it will be gone.

And soon the trees of spring
will become the trees of memory,
and will be shaken by the powerful winds
of memory, cowering
like blown candles and blazing askew.

----Paul Murray in The Absent Fountain

In the Making

The gift, when it comes,
comes always from where
you least expect: either

from that hurt void you feel
after actual loss
or from mere absence

of a longed-for music,
from a line or a theme
you cannot seem to recall

or a phrase of a poem
you cannot complete.
But then with an instinct

born from that lack
or that need--suddenly,
out of the side

of the poem, another music
begins, another song.
And there it is on its feet,

bone of your bone and yet
free, flesh of your flesh
but not yours, a theme

like a new Eve emerging.

--Paul Murray in These Black Stars