Life can be unkind, even as it ends.
This sonnet is from a narrative work about the early wars of Wessex.
I wrote it not long before spinal surgery. I was screaming inside my head with pain at the time.
Sonnet
The good man’s prolonged death
The pain brought clouds of darkness to his mind.
His soul screamed for relief but there was none,
None for the pain continued on with its pure grind
And nothing, nothing now could here be done.
He’d screamed and screamed but screams brought no relief
And when he stopped he panted to take breath.
When sleeping drafts brought sleep the sleep was brief,
Then when awake he’d pray for some swift death,
But Death held back refusing to relent.
For some the end is swift, ah, oh, so quick.
Although he screamed aloud that he’d repent
The Fates they seemed now up to some old trick,
The suffering of the cruel may well seem right;
This good man’s end seemed cruel, an act of spite.
© Trevor Morgan 2010
From: “Tales of the Gewissae”
The Rising Tide 