Feel The Death

Feel the death
And the sadness of the dying
When she whom we loved
Slows, to die
Slowly
As Spring came
Venturing forth that year
With warm days.


There was a feeling, then,
Knowledge
Lost as the months and years
Leeched away in living
That stark contrast of being
To leave only memories
Only memories
Fragile as snow on sea,
Drained as they were of that immanence
Of losing
When we felt the joy, the pure joy of life
Known only through the knowing 
Of such loss.

And how many years - how many -
Have we wasted
Since then?

It is this warm Spring Sun
Which reminds,
And I am at last calm
Again
Saddened but suffused -
For there is essence, here
Where all life, connected,
Burgeons forth in Tree, Bird, Breeze, Song, Silence
And Sun:
A beginning
To live
Again
In hope
Of somehow presencing
This
Born from the gentle slowness
Stretched between sadness
And love:
So often lost
In that haste which becomes the living
Of our life.

Lost, as the greening hedge
Behind
Becomes lost, stripped of its buds,
Flailed by a flail
Noisily, mechanically
Driven.

So I feel again the death
And the sadness of the dying

DW Myatt