We stand but six steps from the foulest shore,
Imagining the snow in October’s chill,
A tanker looms where the port waters pour,
And on balconies, flags sway at will.

Perhaps I miss gazing ‘pon the gray
Of walls tainted by buses and brine,
Those shutters of smoke and paint
From where I watched you sleep and lie.

I was twenty, with vices and mind,
You a bit younger, though never confessed,
But already I rued those words entwined,
Claiming the world was with you at its best.

If now I could take you aside and reveal,
Yes, ‘tis true the world changed in your embrace,
But, my love, it’s now a wound that won’t heal
For you’ve darkened it more with your grace.

Marco Delrio

A Verse of Spite

Thoughts about it – by E. Ashcroft

What the poem offers is a remembered geography, both physical and emotional, filtered through late recognition. There is, at last, a discernible narrative spine here, and that is to its credit. We are not merely in abstraction or interior weather, but in a specific place near a port, with a tanker, balconies, flags, soot, buses, shutters. The opening stanza establishes a liminal position: “six steps from the foulest shore.” This is an effective image, not because it is picturesque, but because it is morally and sensorially ambiguous. The shore is foul, industrial, compromised, and yet it is where the memory anchors itself. The imagined snow in October already signals dissonance: a mind projecting purity or anomaly onto a setting that does not naturally provide it. This is not nostalgia in comfort; it is nostalgia under strain.

The second stanza deepens this tension by turning inward, but without abandoning place. The speaker does not miss beauty, but the grayness of walls stained by buses and salt. This is a good, intelligent choice. The poem understands that memory rarely preserves what was objectively pleasant; it preserves what was lived through. The image of shutters “of smoke and paint” is one of the poem’s strongest moments. It compresses neglect, habitation, and intimacy into a single surface. The detail that the speaker watched the beloved sleep from there is quietly effective. It is unadorned and avoids sentimentality, which is no small achievement given the material.

The third stanza introduces time explicitly and, with it, guilt. The age difference is handled with restraint, though not without risk. “You a bit younger, though never confessed” is intriguing but underdeveloped. It hints at asymmetry, perhaps secrecy, but the poem does not pursue the ethical implications. Instead, it pivots to regret over language: “those words entwined, / Claiming the world was with you at its best.” This is a familiar motif—the grand youthful declaration later recognized as hubris—but here it feels earned because it emerges from a concrete past rather than a generic reflection.

The final stanza is the poem’s most dangerous and most revealing. The speaker attempts a retroactive address, an impossible confession delivered too late. The admission that “the world changed in your embrace” initially sounds like a romantic concession, but the turn that follows is darker and more interesting. The world is now “a wound that won’t heal,” and the beloved’s “grace” is implicated in that damage. This is a risky move, and the poem deserves credit for attempting it. However, the phrasing slightly blunts its own edge. “You’ve darkened it more with your grace” is conceptually provocative but rhetorically soft. Grace is doing too much work here, and the line skirts close to paradox for its own sake. One wants either more cruelty or more specificity.

Stylistically, the poem is uneven but often effective. The diction oscillates between grounded observation and elevated phrasing. At times this works well, especially when the elevated language frames concrete images. At other times, particularly in the final stanza, the register begins to smooth over emotional abrasion rather than expose it. There are also moments where the syntax grows faintly prosaic, as if the poem briefly forgets its own music.

Technically, the poem adheres to a consistent stanzaic form and rhyme scheme, though the rhymes themselves are variable in strength. Some are clean and serviceable; others feel forced or merely adequate. The meter holds, but not always gracefully. There are lines that carry one stress too many, especially where explanation intrudes. Still, the formal discipline is sufficient to support the poem’s length without collapse.

The overall impression is of a poem that finally allows itself to be specific, and is stronger for it. It is not flawless. It sometimes explains what could be implied, and it occasionally leans on elevated language where sharper detail would cut deeper. Yet there is real maturity here: a willingness to implicate the speaker, to let memory be compromised, and to admit that love’s influence is not purely salvific. The poem does not absolve itself, and that restraint is its quiet strength.