Feb 2017
ALLONE, WITHOUTEN ANY COMPAIGNYE
There was no sound.
There was no silence.
There was just an absence
of both.
The world too
had somehow disappeared.
Nothing existed except
me
and your death.
Death was the no-sound.
Death was the silence
beyond silence.
Death was the vanished world.
For a split second it was
painless.
As if I existed
inside a vacuum.
Suddenly the world
flooded back
silence and sound
returned.
I was alive.
Your death stared me
in the face.
It had become
a fact.
There was now
nothing but pain.
A shirt on the line
came alive
filled with form
then died again.
An innocent morning
unaware of how
it would always be
remembered for ever.
The apple pie
in the oven
had begun to burn.
A magpie
sauntered up
the crazy
paving.
There was no sound.
There was no silence.
There was just an absence
of both.
The world too
had somehow disappeared.
Nothing existed except
me
and your death.
Death was the no-sound.
Death was the silence
beyond silence.
Death was the vanished world.
For a split second it was
painless.
As if I existed
inside a vacuum.
Suddenly the world
flooded back
silence and sound
returned.
I was alive.
Your death stared me
in the face.
It had become
a fact.
There was now
nothing but pain.
A shirt on the line
came alive
filled with form
then died again.
An innocent morning
unaware of how
it would always be
remembered for ever.
The apple pie
in the oven
had begun to burn.
A magpie
sauntered up
the crazy
paving.
The title is from Chaucer's The Miller's Tale which I was reading at the time. I was making an apple pie at the time and listening to a song he liked and watching the birds in the garden. Just the ordinary minutia of a day that had no particular place to go until that phone call and the world just seemed to seep away. The apple pie just burnt.
Today I baked my first apple pie since then and watched a hoard of magpies playing in the garden...seven for a secret never to be told.
Today I baked my first apple pie since then and watched a hoard of magpies playing in the garden...seven for a secret never to be told.
