Anniversary Blues
O to fade! To pass! To sleep! To die!
To live and listen and not to speak -
perchance some alternate reality
is all my grim alienation does seek.
The thunderclap of Tawhiri raging
silence not a loving fool’s complaint,
nor portend for whom the bell tolls
when the echoes of time grow faint
My heart alas divided against itself
knows not what to say or what to feel,
and with ponderous words recited
I return your resting place to kneel.
Some final absolutions shared alone -
cold black rain upon my brow and cuff.
Judge not a froward son - I am who
I am, and have been judged enough
We are but the quick and the dead,
and just or unjust no keeper of time.
O tell, what sin was imputed to you?
What concealed divine law or crime?
And what palsy so dark the lamps
of Heaven and Earth burn less bright?
And do we in this realm find peace
or is death’s victory our only respite?
Only in beds of posthumous sleep
will end my unspoken confessions.
Nay, I no longer exhume the past -
it rebukes all my searching questions.
From umbilical dawn to end of days
I failed you - I added unto your woe.
In life and death there comes a time
when to hold on and when to let go
May your life and times early passed
live on in the heart that lives in me,
for in all the silent screams below
is my own howl in my own vanity.
As I pen this ode the charcoal sky
has communicated more than I can tell -
no loss, no sorrow, no love unfeigned
can unring that breathless tolling bell
Written: July 1991
Copyright © Keith D Trestrail | Year Posted 2022
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