A Cambridge University student, while doing research on the British poet Siegfried Sassoon, has found buried treasure. A poem penned to Sassoon’s boyfriend, Glen Byam Shaw.
Written in 1925, when homosexuality was still a crime in the U.K., perhaps the omission of pronouns is more than a matter of poetic style.
Not a blast from the past, but a sigh…
Untitled poem
Though you have left me, I’m not yet alone:
For what you were befriends the firelit room;
And what you said remains & is my own
To make a living gladness of my gloom
The firelight leaps & shows your empty chair
And all our harmonies of speech are stilled:
But you are with me in the voiceless air
My hands are empty, but my heart is filled.
Copyright Siegfried Sassoon by kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon
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