For Those Who Never Love And Then Repent Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

[For A.E. Housman (1859 - 1936) ]

Deliberately he chose the done and dusted
Living in sepia tones with quiet reflection
To dream of country lads, courage and regret:
Recruiting them to war or worse intention
To death on distant battlegrounds or gibbet
Claiming loyalty or faithless lovers sent them.

Fearing the hard caress, the felled swathes,
Sleep faux farmer's boy - what point to rise?
No harvest comes to wintry empty bays
The farm's deserted, nothing to rear or prize
But stack-yard groundsel, chaff and shiftless days,
Beneath the earth the quick-limed dry-stock lies:

For those who never love and then repent
Sheave postcards from the land of lost content.