Your warm embrace
Surrounded him, depended, leaned against his
Stately figure,
As both of your harmonious hands
Smoothed each other’s sides
And cartographed those rolling lands.
You, beautifully, were
Expressively exhausted; your eyelids
Drooped downward, like a
Curtain for the Holy Place.
The tenderness of your face
Was given, in whole, to him
That stoic threw your burdens
Onto himself, and lifted your chin.
You trusted one another
More than the sun trusts the moon
To play their intertwining parts;
A child and her mother
Could not have known each other’s hearts
As deeply as the pair of you.
And as for me?
Well, so, you see,
I stood, motionless as a cat,
The world revolved around this scene
While I, unwilling satellite that
Looked upon the intimacy
Of two souls,
Broke.
Shattered, the wellspring of tears
Burst forth, only barely contained
All rational thoughts and fears
Torn away by the vicious night-wind
As all I had known, seen, or been
Was thrown away from the mind.
Gone were the idyllic images
Of friends laughing in the shade of trees
Where every soul hears and sees
The song of birds and children;
Gone were the late nights spent
Sitting on sofas in sweet silence
And soft scent.
For now the soul knows and despairs,
Midnight tolls, farewell! too late!
Too late to change these dreary airs
And revive the spirit from misery
The body weaves through throngs of stars
Hiding every drop of spray
That fell from Venus, or from Mars,
This hour is the final doomsday,
As one glance at those two
Drove all measures of happiness,
All foolish thought of blooms and May,
Into the death-black and echoing cave.
No light, no hope is left to save.