Words of love so often stale and
die with the lips that utter them,
And go to the wormy realm of
the bone and the root and the gem.

And yet I do not dread the sidereal
silence of the tomb
When, like the stalwart evergreen,
the legend of our love will bloom

Our stories entwined, and chiselled
into history's marble pages
Our light will blaze like all the stars
Through the dark and through the ages

For we will prosper in my art
as the rose that lives and breathes,
And tread the gleaming aisles of glory
but not as kings festooned in wreaths

Nor as Byzantine manikins
from walls of tessellated gold
Nor simulacra, cast in bronze
each from the same heroic mould

But as creatures of light and shade
with just a spark of the divine
Where, mulled by bellies full of fire,
our blood flowed rich and warm as wine