This
Is The Garden of Her Youth
This is the garden of her youth
Where, for years, she as a young girl
Played
And where there was life, laughter,
Tears.
This is the garden where later in her living
She came to sit in those days
When life depressed her to leave only an impression
Of being not quite
Alive.
This is the garden where we sat, together,
When I as I often was in my stupid selfish expectation
Expected more than that half-smile,
That awkward touch,
The silence about our future and our life,
Unable then to appreciate the deep depths
Of her utterly anguished despair:
This is the large garden, South-facing,
Where I sit, alone now, waiting the hours
Before we, her friends, gather
Dead
From her leaving, her loss.
There is the warming Sun, of morning:
Sparrows on a lawn,
The collared-Dove, calling
And two Butterflies, twisting, flying
As if joined by some unseen changing thread
Of Life.
Here I sit, waiting
For answers,
But there is only the slight breeze
To move the tops of the trees:
Her cat, content, curled up
There in that shade where the Eucalyptus tree
Outlived her.
No words
To describe, remove, the guilt
For she, cutting her threads to life,
Killed herself after I selfishly, stupidly, shamelessly
Left, deaf to her pleading.
What is there now but the strong Sun in a sky of cloudless
Blue:
A funeral to make such tears
As move us to regret
The life, lost,
Taken?
And prayers, yes, there should be prayers:
But, who, to hear them?
This is the garden of her youth
Where she, four years old, played
And her father planted the sapling
Which grew to have a cat sit beneath its spreading tallness
While a man wept
And the hot Sun of early June bore down
To leave him mournful, humbled
With no words, nothing, to express his loss:
Only memories
To facture such self-esteem as kept him selfish
Amid the illusion that was the living of his life.
Will there be a kneeling, a prayer,
A silent, humble, hope?
DW Myatt