Green limb upon the ground
Mark’d for death you I’ve found,
Still, though removed from branches awry
And crashed to earth as stars from the sky,
Your berries are ripe, and leaves still green.
How do you, dear limb resistance,
Deny furor mean
And Death’s persistence?
How, there on the ****,
With no draught of sap,
Do you insist “more battering, more”?
Like the feet that trample you,
You buck the sole of cruel fate’s shoe
Where I would bear the grind,
Gritted teeth, whilst I shed a tear,
But pay no mind!
When, shorn from your grace of pure vitality
Leaves hope aloft, high as the canopy.
Is try not, then, the struggles portend
Such are the means, so banal, too, the end?
Even in the noon affair,
You envy green becomes more fair
And by six bells your might is dun
And you, alike with the settled sun,
For where was limb, there now is none.
It seems that Nature foul has, this battle, won.
But in the shades of passing night
Your rebel clarion on black is white,
And my own nihil
Walks with me still
Though at some limb’s great distance
Urging me with Death’s persistence
That I too am so green a limb
And will befall a similar fate
To wilt and fade, just as he.
Along to death, I carry this profession
Though even that, now,
Green and envious of life,
Its certainties I begin to question
And hum the mantra of the green limb strife.