Remains of the day

I was so shocked. I had naively gone to bed thinking all would be well having seen some early results. And then awoke to the news, felt sick and struggled to stop crying to get to work and to focus. When I got to Workington, the first sound I symbolically heard was the lonely cry of a seagull. I got on with the day but then afterwards went down to sit by the sea and looked back on these shores. This was the point when I began to cry again. What have we done? The shame of it. Shame on us. The lonely sound of that seagull will haunt us for a long time to come. 

The City - by C.P. Cavafy

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.