The Grief

Mortal men immortal grieving, and candles dim That gave tears rainbow in their light The heart presses down still overflows the brim Beyond all sorrow there's only night. For we conscious live unconscious in our heart In silk cocoons of faith, we hide for the most part. But death comes when we emerge bright on wings Fragile as the memory of being dust It anchors our high soaring like those invisible strings That keep our kites straining in a gust But it is tragedy of soaring that encumbers dreams I have seen kites becoming birds where love screams I have seen us mythic men with wax wilting wings Dripping feathers like sweat in the sun I have tasted the terror of falling, how the heart wrings Us dry of illusions where the grief begun The consciousness of death is all that made us great We poor Bartaemus shuddering naked at the gate. It is from this ash we invented the phoenix of our will Fear keep us rising to conquer space And by this conquest hold prancing time to be still And meter not our little milk of grace Those we call brave have all surrendered to the flame The sun's bite on the kite string, the tragedy of our game. Not me, I keep the cocoon door lidded tight, and wings Transparent, and invisible to brimming night I mute my heart where the wind like a sweet siren sings And do not trust the sweet pipings of this light. It is my rage against the pain, what is not born cannot die And none can fall, that wingless, never sought to fly. The grief is not the consequencies that so shudder us It's not the sudden loss, the brutal snapping And snatching away from us, reiterating: impotent dust! The grief is that tree, the fruit so beguiling The longing to be what we were not to be, the lost path The leaf fallen, the deep incision of love's unerring wrath.