Babette Deutsch

THERE is a place of bitter memories

Dreary and wide and lonely as the sea,

Foaming and moaning; there they come to me

Like wild gulls crying sea-taught monodies:

Iron-winged hours, heavy, heavy with dread;

Dawn after death; the sound of a shut door;

And shining love that has a withered core;

The eyes of those who fight and starve for bread.

There is doom, and change, and silence, and denying;

Memories of these pluck at the heart of me.

And over the bitter roar of the old dumb sea

The air is filled with the noise of wild gulls crying.