Lamentation: An Ambiguity to Make Us Laugh
Really, this just won’t do––
Silence in the face of such grave undoing.
You, who had a gracious word for all things inexplicable.
Where is your rage?
Or, was this your highest ambition, too?
One you neither sought nor fought
Accepting this as the ultimate meaning of life?
Life––
Now there’s an ambiguity
to make us laugh, and weep!
Put up your Sanskit, Quron, Torah, Holy books
Close down your Locke, your Marx, your Burke
Silence your Kant, Kirkegaard, Spinoza
Leave Jefferson undisturbed
and Lincoln to his rest
Shut up your Bard
Silence all the players of Waterloo
Silence if you may, the angels, too
Put up your testaments
Speak not of gods and men.
Some truths are much too hard to know
Some words too harsh to speak
Some pain too livid to repent.
What, have you no answers?
Then let us answer to you. You, who were
Mercury, our winged morning star,
Venus, our brilliant evening lode,
Polaris, our centre of dead reckoning.
There! I spoke the dreaded word.
Dead, reckoning to live again. No––
Still life in death, you said.
What life is it that abides alone?
Gone now to wood
those fingers, gentle to the touch
Frozen to plastic lips
that kissed, tasted water, spoke care
smiled love into our days.
The space once occupied with grace is hollow now
The minds now occupied with you are grieved
Your spirit, gone, occupies us yet.