Time does not bring relief

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied who told me time would ease me of my pain!

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,and last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;

but last year's bitter loving must remain

heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear to go
- so with his memory they brim.
and entering with relief some quiet place where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'
And so stand stricken, still remembering him.


Edna St Vincent Millay (1892 -1950)