Ako & Haruna

I need to find a room,
Somewhere for my friends to stay.
Blackbirds in the cold.

After Strindberg I

Trudging once more through dark, polluted night,
Remembering that fleeting moment: "day",
I thought I caught, Or seemed to catch, a glimpse
Of amber-orange rust and peeling paint.
Paint blacker than the night through which my spirit
Continued wearily to make its way,
Or blacker than the spirit I dragged homeward
Yearning once more for long-awaited day.
The canker-bitten metal which I'd noticed
Pertainèd to a looming iron stove
Resembling a silhouetted man
Who solitary stood among the crowds.
There stands he, dressed in black, with a tall hat,
His penetrating eyes are shining bright
Like hot coals crying out for oxygen,
The fire at its death, losing its might.
What age is this my vision, old or young?
Oh, tired as I am, I cannot see
With normal clarity; instead, a veil
Diaphanously shelters you from me.
But peering through the smoke I just make out
Your face - a white smear, misty through the dark,
Of ash, the thumb-work of our short lives' artist,
The misanthrope, the sadist's lingering mark.

Already I have here a poem written,
But it was not of quality, I am sure;
O'er Shakespeare's metre had I harshly ridden,
And for its clumsiness I had no cure.
Why can't my head be filled with inspiration,
With bounteous fruit made pregnant and replete?
Why, when I write, does my imagination
Dry up, leaving my poems incomplete?
I know th'imagination must be given
All the time that it needs to spark ideas.
They say that it won't work if it is driven
and doing so confirm my im patient fears.
For now, I'll leave it, and come back refreshed,
And hope my thoughts will not be so enmeshed.