My heart is heavy with sadness

 

To Harriet McCanta

 

My heart is heavy with sadness,

joy is nowhere to be found,

why is it so dark, so cold?

Just yesterday I was full of gladness,

my ears were filled with joyous sound,

my eyes with colors alive and bold.

 

I have gone from a beautiful garden in bloom,

full of flowers, colorful and fragrant,

to a desert, desolated, full of gloom,

abandoned and vagrant.

 

What is it that I did wrong?

I always thought my love was strong,

yet here I am sad and alone,

with a heart that feels like stone.

 

No more, no more I say,

Lord, take this pain away!

Forgive me Lord, not my will be done,

let it be Yours, or none.

 

I look at my children, I see their faces,

uncertainty, fear, pain their graces,

they pray to Him once more,

"Please make like it was before."

 

When I thought of her, the center of my life,

my heart trembled with frenzy,

she was my friend, partner, lover and wife,

the earth, moon and stars looked at her with envy.

 

I am in the darkest hole, I see no light,

I live, but this is not life,

all around me is pain and blight,

resentment, anger and strife.

 

When is this going to end,

am I ever to see the light?

I am in the middle of the raging sea,

caught in a storm in the dead of night.

When will my soul mend,

when will tranquil waters come to me?

 

The days pass, one after another,

they are all the same, its all a blur,

no form, no shape, just drab and gray,

this is what seems here to stay.

 

Little by little the sun arises,

timid, with dread its steps comprises

as it tries to cast away shadows

to lead me from my gallows.

 

Is it the light I will follow,

or in my pity will I wallow?

The answer I have known all along,

it is hidden somewhere in this song.

 

Now, long at last

the winter seems to be past,

the sun is high, spring is here,

birds chirp, life and hope are near.

 

There comes a time of birth and renovation,

not the phoenix from ashes reborn,

a true new person, with love an innovation,

the infirmity of loss of self, torn.

 

The journey thus began, and now I go,

where it will end, we all know.

Each day I will not take for granted,

for each moment I will savor, let it be wanted.

 

I am the secret, it was always in me,

but through the pain it was hard to see.

In your journey, dark valleys you will enter,

but you are never alone, when He is the center.

 

 

 

© Pedro Marenco

Sacramento, CA October 21, 1993.