the cinnamon peeler's wife

i am- yet what i am, none cares or knows;
my friends forsake me like a memory lost;
i am the self-consumer of my woes-
they rise and vanish in oblivious host,
like shadows in love frenzied stifled throes
and yet i am, and live-like vapours tossed

into the nothingness of scorn and noise
into the living sea of waking dreams-
where there is neither sense of life or joy,
but the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
even the dearest that i love the best
are strange- nay rather stranger than the rest

i long for scenes where man hath never trod
a place where woman never smiled or wept
there to abide with my creator God
and sleep as i in my childhood sweetly slept
untroubling and untroubled where i lie
the grass below, above the vaulted sky.

-john clare

(british poet, clare (1793-1864), is best known for the amazing poems he wrote while in a mental asylum)

(this poem was one of my favorites in high school, when i think it expressed the angst of that age. later in college, this poem resurfaced when i had to interpret it in a one-woman act in a theater class (yeah don't ask). i just looked at it again today, thought i would share)

(if you are reading any of this- hating it, liking it, being bored by it- leave me a comment!)