Inhibited

I could not pity your pain but I pitied the branches Losing what little the frost had left them to hold. I could not warm you with sorrow; I turned to the sparrows, Clustered like heavy brown blossoms puffed out by the cold. They could not help me. I looked at my hands; they were helpless; Strange and detached, less related to me than the birds. Baffled, I called on the mind: it carried me, floundering, Lost among meaningless phrases, tossed in a welter of words. Too great for my blundering comfort, your anguish confused me. From a great distance, I saw you standing alone. Frozen and stark, in a black iron circle of silence, I could not pity your pain; I could scarcely pity my own.