This has happened before
He knows the ribbon of it,
the fluttering murmur of
her final breath that mouths
on earth is no abiding stay
all men must pass away.
and the refraction of its sin
when he says
Did I whiten you again?
allowing the ripple of his grief
to frame its recollection.
And now remembered
it seems so ancient an event,
that for one long echo
time might stop;
and recommence
in the forgetting
of pitch and sprocket,
or at least hold still long enough
that he can splice
and better understand it.
The dead’s final gift to the living,
this swoop of sorrow,
the violence that Spring wraps tight.