then I changed my mind
Am I allowed to say that tranquil face
Has mirrored mine? That we have shared the thrills
And pains of married life and used our lips
And eyes as signals to the world at large
About those minor shrug-off happenings
Marking the map of our existence.
We’re now apart and here’s the difference:
That I must welcome death which brought relief
For you, from agony and distressful views,
Which had you say: death is the easy thing.
An end to mirrored faces and the ways
The two of us explored the unknown life.
Ah, let me look again at that conjoinèd face,
Tended by those who eased your nightly pain.
And note, death is denied a final win.
Those parted lips suggest a need to call
An abstract word; adulthood, let us say;
Our new children born along the way.
I alone, but knowing what I gained,
An inner force that death perhaps explained.
Has mirrored mine? That we have shared the thrills
And pains of married life and used our lips
And eyes as signals to the world at large
About those minor shrug-off happenings
Marking the map of our existence.
That I must welcome death which brought relief
For you, from agony and distressful views,
Which had you say: death is the easy thing.
An end to mirrored faces and the ways
The two of us explored the unknown life.
Tended by those who eased your nightly pain.
And note, death is denied a final win.
Those parted lips suggest a need to call
An abstract word; adulthood, let us say;
Our new children born along the way.
An inner force that death perhaps explained.
I have read and reread this poem a number of times now. It is beautiful, and says so much about a long marriage, shared lives, and the death of a spouse. Thank you for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteColette: I wrote it this afternoon and it took 90 minutes. Ordinarily I would have concluded it would need radical editing but normal rules don't apply at the moment. As I say elsewhere I don't favour tombstones, etc, and I substitute that which I have tried to do since I was eight. I'm idiotically proud of "conjoined" with its added accent, a poetic solution to filling in an absent syllable and thereby achieving scansion.
ReplyDelete