The wine-dark pain spills over, in my bed alone.
In nighttime stillness is my heart beset alone.
Why did you make me this way, why did you make me?
O God, why did you make the world, thus left alone?
My lone soul that aches for others’ nearness,
Why not make me like you, and be glad alone?
My forebears made us for company in sorrow.
You, motherless, childless, cannot beget, alone.
Why was I born from another’s pain? A mother’s
body, carried me—but suffered and bled alone.
To what do I owe the tormenting of this heart,
A solitary drum that beats “not-dead,” alone.
What do I owe you, thus born into this sorrow,
Are we all bound to you in debt, alone?
I was anointed “shame” ere having seen the light.
Why give me to the world, naked, blood-clad, alone?
Why must we plod and sweat and toil to till the earth?
Answer me, Lord; we cannot live from bread alone.
We were abandoned, then commanded to find you.
Why send us prophets to die in your stead, alone?
I’ll renounce you too, God, unveiled, unfettered, I
sing, birdlike, free, and leave my prayers unsaid, alone.
I trace my finger ’round the mirror Pleiades.
Around me Time winds its unending thread, alone.