Six Words

Six Words

There are six words someone once said to me
That cling fast on my mind;
Whispered tenderly on warm breath in the night:-
“I hate you when you go…”

Beethoven had filled our hearts that night,
Music we had spoken of, and serious things
We’d laughed at.
(He said one hundred other little things to me,
But I remember these six words.)

And now that he is but a part of my past,
Something that happened, sometime,
Some other place,
A long while ago,
Someone I thought I loved;
I have a reply I’d like to answer with,
Something I should like to cry out to him,
The pity of a thing that’s dead:-
“I hate you now you’re gone!”

(1970s)

Catherine Broughton