Sad Pilgrimage

Sad Pilgrimage

All morning we drive through ragged mists
whipping across the grey ribbon of highway;
coming to that city on the slopes in the dying day,
place of many crows, place of bitter memories.

It is a reunion , thirty four years on,
of men and women without futures,
come to this place as one might limp to Avalon
or Lourdes for miracles or redemption.

And some talk too much, and are feverishly bright,
and some are merely sullen and withdrawn;
and some cast their eyes about, expecting faces
they will never see again, in all their days.

Only in the eyes is there some faint gleam
of who we were, and even there, like a cataract,
is the memory of lost days, failed dreams,
ancient betrayals, unforgivable pain.

Alone, in the dawn of a day promising rain
I walk broad streets, the empty windswept set
on which I played my tragicomic part.
The dismal archaeology of the heart.