Edited by Jim McCrory, Friday, 25 July 2025, 14:55
“I am, yet none cares or knows”
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I Am Alone
I was reading a poem yesterday that caught my attention. Poems at times can relate heavily to my own experience in life. Especially this one that deals with loneliness and isolation; an experience that affected me when I left my religion of thirty years. See how this poem might relate to your own circumstances.
In the silence of a forgotten room in an English asylum, a man once wrote, “I am—yet what I am none cares or knows.” The voice belonged to John Clare, a poet worn down by life, mental illness, and the slow unravelling of his world. Yet in that bleak space, he penned lines that still echo with tender power, especially to those today who sit in the long shadows of estrangement, displacement, and despair.
There is something sacred about such honesty. Clare's words come not from the polished pulpit or the safety of social acceptance, but from the deep, unvarnished truth of human vulnerability. He names what so many feel but cannot say: the crushing weight of being invisible.
I’ve met such souls. A mother weeping softly in a refugee camp, her children asleep beside her but her home a thousand miles away and burnt to ash. Siblings, mother, and son, once close, now divided by religious indoctrination that prize rules over relationship. A quiet woman sitting alone on a bench in a bustling Western city, the language around her foreign, the culture unfamiliar, the ache of belonging unbearable.
To all of these, Clare might simply say: I understand.
Yet the miracle of “I Am” is not only its sorrow—it’s the final turn of the soul. In his last lines, Clare reaches for something not of this world:
There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept.
This is not a theological claim. It is something more intimate. Clare is not arguing for God—he is resting in Him, reaching toward the One who knew him when no one else did. It is the voice of a child returning to the Father’s arms. And in that return, Clare finds what war, madness, and estrangement could never steal: peace.
What a quiet triumph that is.
We live in a world swollen with voices and noise yet strangely emptied of understanding. People are exiled not only by politics and geography but by emotional walls, invisible but high. How many walk among us, smiling on the outside while inwardly crying, “I am, yet none cares or knows”?
And yet, for all its despair, Clare’s poem holds out a hand. It offers solidarity with the forgotten, and more than that, it offers the hope of being seen. Not by the world, which can be fickle and cruel, but by God, who knows every thought and tear.
There is deep comfort here for those who suffer. For those cut off from their families by human doctrine. It speaks to those cast adrift by war, its separation and exile. To those who just don’t fit in. It affirms that we have a home in Him that cannot be taken. For the foreigner, for the forgotten, for the emotionally broken; Clare’s cry becomes a prayer, and his prayer becomes a promise.
That though we may feel lost, we are never beyond the reach of our Creator.
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept.
Sleep, not in despair, but in trust. In the arms of the One who saw Clare in his cell—and sees us still.
The Crushing Weight of Being Alone
“I am, yet none cares or knows”
Image generated with Copilot
I Am Alone
I was reading a poem yesterday that caught my attention. Poems at times can relate heavily to my own experience in life. Especially this one that deals with loneliness and isolation; an experience that affected me when I left my religion of thirty years. See how this poem might relate to your own circumstances.
In the silence of a forgotten room in an English asylum, a man once wrote, “I am—yet what I am none cares or knows.” The voice belonged to John Clare, a poet worn down by life, mental illness, and the slow unravelling of his world. Yet in that bleak space, he penned lines that still echo with tender power, especially to those today who sit in the long shadows of estrangement, displacement, and despair.
There is something sacred about such honesty. Clare's words come not from the polished pulpit or the safety of social acceptance, but from the deep, unvarnished truth of human vulnerability. He names what so many feel but cannot say: the crushing weight of being invisible.
I’ve met such souls. A mother weeping softly in a refugee camp, her children asleep beside her but her home a thousand miles away and burnt to ash. Siblings, mother, and son, once close, now divided by religious indoctrination that prize rules over relationship. A quiet woman sitting alone on a bench in a bustling Western city, the language around her foreign, the culture unfamiliar, the ache of belonging unbearable.
To all of these, Clare might simply say: I understand.
Yet the miracle of “I Am” is not only its sorrow—it’s the final turn of the soul. In his last lines, Clare reaches for something not of this world:
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept.
This is not a theological claim. It is something more intimate. Clare is not arguing for God—he is resting in Him, reaching toward the One who knew him when no one else did. It is the voice of a child returning to the Father’s arms. And in that return, Clare finds what war, madness, and estrangement could never steal: peace.
What a quiet triumph that is.
We live in a world swollen with voices and noise yet strangely emptied of understanding. People are exiled not only by politics and geography but by emotional walls, invisible but high. How many walk among us, smiling on the outside while inwardly crying, “I am, yet none cares or knows”?
And yet, for all its despair, Clare’s poem holds out a hand. It offers solidarity with the forgotten, and more than that, it offers the hope of being seen. Not by the world, which can be fickle and cruel, but by God, who knows every thought and tear.
There is deep comfort here for those who suffer. For those cut off from their families by human doctrine. It speaks to those cast adrift by war, its separation and exile. To those who just don’t fit in. It affirms that we have a home in Him that cannot be taken. For the foreigner, for the forgotten, for the emotionally broken; Clare’s cry becomes a prayer, and his prayer becomes a promise.
That though we may feel lost, we are never beyond the reach of our Creator.
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept.
Sleep, not in despair, but in trust. In the arms of the One who saw Clare in his cell—and sees us still.
I Am—Yet Not Alone: John Clare : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43948/i-am