Suffering is one
very
long
moment.
Time itself does not progress | It revolves.
It circles round one center of pain.
There is only one season | the season of sorrow.
It is always twilight in this prison cell and in this heart.
In the sphere of time and thought | motion
is no more.
I say to myself that I ruined myself,
that nobody great or small can be ruined
except by his own hand.
Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark
and has the nature of infinity.
The only people I would care to be with
are artists and people who have suffered:
those who know what beauty is,
those who know what sorrow is:
no one else interests me.
When you really want love
you will find it waiting
for you.
Note on composition: Composed June 3, 2023, Merritt Island, FL. My friend, the historian Malcolm Magee, posted a meme quoting what is the third from last stanza in this poem that attributed the quotation to Oscar Wilde. Malcolm liked the quotation but couldn’t verify it, so I confirmed for him that it was from Oscar Wilde’s “De Profundis” (Latin: “from the depths,” a reference to Psalm 130), a letter written in 1897 near the end of his imprisonment in Reading Goal for “gross indecency,” specifically his homosexual relationships. I felt that the sad beauty of Wilde’s words would lend themselves well to being recast in poetic form (with minor changes).
James Rovira 
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