Sums It Up

Inhibited:

I could not pity your pain but I pitied the branches

Losing what little the frost had left them to hold.

I could not warm you with sorrow; I turned to the sparrows,

Clustered like heavy brown blossoms puffed out by the cold.

They could not help me. I looked at my hands; they were helpless;

Strange and detached, less related to me than the birds.

Baffled, I called on the mind: it carried me, floundering,

Lost among meaningless phrases, tossed in a welter of words.

Too great for my blundering comfort, your anguish confused me.

From a great distance, I saw you standing alone.

Frozen and stark, in a black iron circle of silence,

I could not pity your pain; I could scarcely pity my own.

Louis Untermeyer.