This is an extract from a long cycle of poems I wrote years and years ago as a teen. I haven't edited it at all, it's straight from my scribbly notebook! It's not fantastic but I thought I'd share it anyway.

The poems are set in Victorian Poland after the 1863 revolt against Russian rule. The storyline is that of a former nobleman, now exiled in Siberia, who witnessed his whole family killed and is now haunted by the memories and with longing for them (grim, I know). The poems are written as a dialogue between him and his departed wife. This is from her perspective as a spirit in the afterlife watching his pain.

I stand here watching you 

as through a window,

face to face, divided by

the glass of all existence. I press

my senseless hands to your reflection ,

my vacant eyes are free to reap their fill.

Break through, the door is barred to me—

yet in the sun and spirit here and shimmer

I can distinguish your lost form 

within that ghastly chaos 

that engulfs you.

 

Black winter, wasteland, bitter smoke—

Your side, the glass is blurred 

with blood and longing. 

No—for I can turn my soul, 

shed of perception,

and in rapt radiance penetrate 

those scars and smears 

that once had been my own.

I call to you, but you are deaf to angels.

I stretch my hands to you again, 

I kiss the glass—

Would that my heaving breast, hot touch

might thaw for you a way...

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