Where are the days of our young passion
Where are the parts participated
In more than some or other fashion
In fact, in lovemaking delighted
Where are the springs in our eager steps
Crossing the threshold of our new doorstep
Painting our very special bedroom
Yet there it was came the cloud of doom
From early, unknown trauma, came down
To settle like blight on our good life
Occasional sunbeams and some strife
Now forty years and more gone around
Where are the lovers are they still there
Still searching for sunbeams, loving pair?
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites to write to the question UbiSunt… Where are they 0r Where oh where?
Title your poem with the question – where are the/they…
Use the questioning within your poem, even with repetition
DO NOT ANSWER it though – the questioning is rhetorical
Employ concepts of mortality, the transience of life, a sense of nostalgia
Suggested themes: Childhood; Youth; Lost Generation; Days of Yore;
Employ whatever poetry style of your choosing from free verse to sonnet
I wonder, Andrew, if there are unknown childhood traumas rumbling about in our psyches [ for many of us ] whether or not they surface, cause pain, or we finally deal with them … that is the conundrum.
“where are the days of our young passion, where are the parts participated in more than some or other fashion, in fact in lovemaking delighted” ~~ firmly implanted in my memories, prized, recalled with pleasure.
Great write, my friend.
Thanks Helen, yes, I think some people ,
manage to weather childhood trauma if what follows on is good enough but for some people (I think of Jude the Obscure on whom Thomas Hardy piles affliction after affliction) it is too much to bear and emerges somewhere down the road… I am glad you have those happy times to treasure!
Andrew your poem is so evocative (and the rhymes worked so well too) a sad mix of what was once and what would rather not have been – the reader really feels the lament of nostalgia, the youthful, eager crossing of the threshold and the servings of strife, though the last line has an upbeat
p.s an impressive carving a la Gill (who has has latterly been unearthed as less than savoury such that even the BBC have had to distance themselves from the artist but kept the art!)
Thanks Laura – yes the rhymes work but thet are not strictly masculine and feminine as per Pushkin…
I first saw Eric Gill as the Typographer who gave us the iconic London Transport typeface and Gill Sans and then I saw his drawings and I carved this before his downfall came to light – it is hard to separate the man and the art…
Wonderfully written, Andrew. You questions are so pertinent to folks our age. Loved your opening lines! How true!!
Trauma follows all of us in large or small amounts. Dealing with it can be difficult!
The carving is beautiful. Is it in wood or clay?
Thanks Dwight, even without trauma “[We] ache in the places that [we] used to play…” as Leonard Cohen said.
The carving is actually 22mm thick MDF – I discovered that using a pin router to follow the drawing lines one could then carve up to or down to the grooves making the bas relief…
Lovers commence a life together in a bed of furious communion … then they live life and take all the hits and glories of it from the same bed. (At some point my wife and I began sleeping in separate bed so tossings and snores don’t wake the other.) Your carving is fine celebration of what births a marriage — most guys I know rue the passing of sexual passion in their marriage (not all), (and I can’t really speak for women), but time usually offers it compensations: passion goes but intimacy grows, which is a more widely spread passion for life. Bed becomes homesteading, the family farm. Still, who doesn’t remember, who doesn’t grieve? Ubi sunt …
Thanks, Brendan – thats a pretty good summing up…
Great poem!
Thanks Jay…
Aging we allways wonder where it all went… and maybe, alas, the trauma is what stays with us, especially when passion has died.
It is something every single person must face if they are lucky enough to live long and prosper…
I like the poem and the carving 👏
Thanks Shaun…
This touches me deeply, yes, trauma reaches down from the womb, and some sadly are captured by its effects. I have no idea of your reality, but I do sense it in my own life’s experiences, and I think, my own dread of it.
Thanks, Paul, I hope you steer clear of it…
Passion passing by is so sad.
I love your carving!
Thanks Sara! It comes to us all and we must try to make the most of each of our 7 ages…