I Am! By John Clare

<p>Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman</p><p> </p><p>I Am!</p><p>BY JOHN CLARE</p><p>I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;</p><p>My friends forsake me like a memory lost:</p><p>I am the self-consumer of my woes—</p><p>They rise and vanish in oblivious host,</p><p>Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes</p><p>And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed</p><p> </p><p>Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,</p><p>Into the living sea of waking dreams,</p><p>Where there is neither sense of life or joys,</p><p>But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;</p><p>Even the dearest that I loved the best</p><p>Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.</p><p> </p><p>I long for scenes where man hath never trod</p><p>A place where woman never smiled or wept</p><p>There to abide with my Creator, God,</p><p>And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,</p><p>Untroubling and untroubled where I lie</p><p>The grass below—above the vaulted sky.</p>