A Poem For Sunday

By Zoe Pollock

Another from the wondrous Atlantic Archives, here's "I Am" by John Clare:

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 oblivion's host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,—
…Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
…But the vast shipwreck of my life's...