There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying.
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I’ve got that feeling once again
I can’t explain you would not understand
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb

I thought that I could not be hurt;
I thought that I must surely be
impervious to suffering
immune to mental pain
or agony.

My world was warm with April sun
my thoughts were spangled green and gold;
my sould filled up with joy, yet felt
the sharp, sweet pain that only joy
can hold.

My spirit soared above the gulls
that, swooping breathlessly so high
o’erhead, now seem to brush their whir-
ring wings against the blue roof of
the sky.

(How frail the human heart must be -
a throbbing pulse, a trembling thing - 
a fragile shining instrument
of crystal, which can either weep,
or sing.)

Then, suddenly my world turned gray,
and darkness wiped aside my joy.
A dull and aching void was left
where careless hands had reached out to
destroy

my silver web of happiness.
The hands then stopped in wonderment,
for, loving me, they wept to see
the tattered ruins of my firma-
ment.

(How frail the human heart must be-
a mirrored pool of thought So deep
and tremulous an instrument
of glass that it can either sing,
or weep.)