Elegy for the Living

 

Lament

 

What child was this

Who drank black waters

Lying stillborn, breathless

With blood no hotter

Than the cool lump of its unformed clay.

 

Though curiously not in its way lifeless,

Not dead

More a flightless

Bird, or head-

Less snake

Not perfectly lifeless, but dead.

 

Praise

 

All that was promised, now done

A life started and ended

As soon over as begun

For all that was intended

That alone remains

 

Solace

 

Count the days to me now

Feel their bleak, sunless pallor

Everywhere the flat, muddy-brown

Pond of existence grows shallower

And all point is lost to purpose

 

More surface than form

Through some trickery or conceit

It is my life forsworn

All no more than a neat

And appropriate lie.

 

Yes, it was I who drank the black goo

And I the stillborn son

I, the poisoned well who

Can never be done

But to steal the sky of its' glimmer.