How Deep the Pain Goes Quiet, After

By Richard Atwood

SOME

the quiet
ones
are those
who bear their wisdom
like a shell
neither arrogant
nor easy

with a hard
look,
that shows
how carefully
they have learned
to guard themselves
what they know.

From Germany to California, with stops in Paris, Turkey, and Greece, these poems are a collection of the yearnings within us all questions asked, answers given, and much that never will.

Still, that love and loss are the greatest gifts, the deepest sorrows one can ever know. And who can say what God is if finding Him, we are both shattered and fulfilled?

May it be that there is no final afterthat there may always be something wonderful, rising from the deep within.

How Deep The Pain Goes Quiet, After was a winning Finalist in USA "Best Books 2011" Awards, sponsored by USA Book News.

Runner-up Poetry Winner of the 2011 New England Book Festival

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450231169

Richard Atwood

Born in Baltimore; raised in York County, Pennsylvania, served in the USAF, with tours in Greece, Turkey, and Germany. Rick has lived in Los Angeles and Denver; currently in Wichita, Kansas. He has also authored two other books of poetry, three screenplays, and two epic stage plays, plus several songs.

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Copyright © 2010 by Richard Atwood

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ISBN:  978-1-4502-3114-5 (sc)

ISBN:  978-1-4502-3116-9 (ebook)

ISBN:  978-1-4502-3115-2 (dj)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 4/4/11

For

                    Red and Karen;

                    Hanley, and   

                    Lenwood.

PROLOGUE

Mankind: Evolution

I am a whisper and a prayer

a myth, a rhyme on wind,

a shading and a plain,

a scattered seed,

a restless thought,

a hope, a name, a dream.

I am parts of water,

parts of light

a bit and edge of stone—

        filed down beyond the quick

        sensitive within the grain.

I have been before…

will come again, a seeker:

an eye in the night

of blighted dyes and thorny stems

… a traveler lent to a time.

I am the faces of angels, faces of war

a prophet by blood,

and a teacher of children:

        taught and passed by my own subjects,

in turn to learn my courage…

with the fear of steel come later,

        in a dangerous fling of arms

        caught reaching at the stars.

And I will leave behind me

monuments of all shapes—

distortions in all sizes:

        reform and record and rebuild

from that of the same which I have

undone before with other hands…

        will raise again with more.

Shall be not as I was, but as I am.

And when the words are done

the deeds resigned,

and speech becomes orations in despair

… shall I then go: a number

among the drifts of slumber,

to be taken under, die

and be walked upon—discarded

like an empty shell to rot

between the graveless haunts of space and soil:

my body dead, my soul absolved…

while I shall rest—

        once more reweave the thread

        from salt and flame and straw…

as dust is to dust, and ash unto ash,

so shall I return to what I am or was.

Prepare… return again:

all fractions still of why I came.

Contents

PROLOGUE

Mankind: Evolution

PART ONE

I Wonder Where

The Place At The Top Of A Stone Flight Of Stairs

the fog

Process

The World

Time Thought

From Boy Into Man

Sounion At Sunset

Eyes

Fever

Remembering Eastern Autumn

Garden

The Scientific Approach

Question

People

M.

She

September, Paris

PART TWO

Hunger

Poem

Let’s Go Away

Definition

Engagement

In Blue…

November 15th

Winter

Poem*

December 19th

PART THREE

New Place

Dawning

Us

Poem-Thoughts

Belated Valentine

Siege

In Love

May 7th

Cost

May 29th

For You

Love Story

Armageddon?

Condition Of Surrender

Penalty

Woman

PART FOUR

Waiting…

Loneliness

Troubles

Christmas Card From My Mother

Resistance

Citizen Of War

The Children: Seekers

Of Poetry And Poets

Some…

For Donald

Athens: House Of Shards

Physical

For Leo: 1962-63

For Hanley

PART FIVE

The Wanderer

Patras

Caravan

Spirituality

Red Rocks: Cathedral

100 Days Of July

Search For A Personal Peace

EPILOGUE

In Memoriam: 16 July 1969

Acknowledgments

About The Author

PART ONE

Early Poems—

Europe/Los Angeles

I Wonder Where

I wonder where they went

—all the people I used to know:

I wonder if they ever got to

where it was they said they were going,

or if they got anywhere at all?

And I wonder who it was that started

                  or didn’t,

or which of them stopped, and why…

or just plain gave up and quit—

because they got scared

and maybe tried to run away

            to another place,

that they couldn’t find anywhere

                  anyway

… no matter how hard they tried. 

The Place At The Top Of A Stone Flight Of Stairs