Image: Juan Ramón Martos: Mal de amores (Bad love): Asturias, Spain | (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Lachrymose III

What hurts more —
flesh or soul
festered, sore?
— takes worse toll:
wrings worst tear?
Who’d its flow
how prefer
— body blow,
whitehot sear
— hellish pain! —
or to hear
once again
that refrain
cold, sad, sere:
fall of rain yesteryear —
Not again,
no — too dear,
that sweet pain
— heart-felt tear —