Listen

For my father. An elegy written in the Spenserian form.

An eastern moon hangs, quieting the day

with pitted smile and shadow painted hands.

No russet fox sniffs, seeking out its prey

and no owl calls a note across the bands

of soundless time that swallow up this dream.

We take this walk as if to say goodbye;

as if this night, somehow, someday, will mean

we took the time, we never took, to cry.

Your face will grace the ground and I will leave to fly.

 

Unnerving: how the night makes us tremble

as light from streetlamps, caught beneath the eaves,

tumbles, like an orange disassembled

or snow off trees: strange stars between the leaves.

Dew pretends to pearl, glitters on the grass

like memories to tears that photos find

while all the poet’s words stream through a glass

and not a mirror honestly designed:

but there must be a truth that you and I can find.

 

We dare not touch the stillness that surrounds

for fear we break the silence we have weaned

from man’s dark hands where cruelty abounds

and selfishness parades as soldiers, gleaned

from noble thoughts of duty, dreams of light,

lessons for the young to follow, cheated

by these cheap and hollow histories, bright

inside their time but, by life, bitterly defeated

for death, uncaring god, will not be entreated.

 

Heaven is a devil’s dream; a pleasant

form of desert, a pyramid desire,

made for all men, king as fine as peasant,

beyond which even angels can’t aspire.

I walk alone, absorbing all you give

as presence, ghost of beauty gone,

and, sensing you, I do not fear to live:

we are as one with life and then move on.

I will sing this silence and you will hear my song.

Reviews

[Carina]

nice write... ;)