It is a subtle echo in the silence of my gripped-tight chest
where a music rises, slowly, slowly, up from whence it rests.
It is a wordless music, this – a hum, a string, a blow.
It is a soundless music, this – an echo of the slough.
The mire of my turmoil is soothed so, slowly, slowly whence
I would, the night air held me close, and I would settle thence.
The music touches on the air, as unseen, as unheard,
as softly blowing trumpets in the breezes off a word.
It is a subtle music, this, that echoes all around us in
the morass of my heaving lungs and the silence, still within.
This music is a single tone which rises to each breath;
a crescendo to peak, at this, my long awaited death.
It is the truest of revivals: death at dawn’s first, gentle light
and I would sing my own lament if I could but convey it right –
this music that ‘tis music not, instead a sleepless seeming
of echoes in the corridors of this, my dearest dreaming.
The long-anticipated rest, sweeter than I could dream, though,
should any other live so long as to belie my death, know:
the wear of time is kind but rough as gravel under unshod feet
and will not hesitate to hold all that you own in sleep.
Till sleep, you shall, and join your own in rest that is not man’s,
for men are such to be distressed at this, their own true lands.
A land that is not earth nor ground, but music echoes, echoing
in every corner of the boundless reaches of our reckoning.
Nay, reckoning, not quite the word, to tell you of this, our sweet peace,
that is not quite the seeming we would wish for till we cease
to burdens carry, errands tarry, grasp tight sand in sweating hands –
as I lie in this, my death-music, I say, in all I have:
There is no higher glory. There is no greater pain.
There is no restless story, for this, all that remains.
We are the wordless symphony.
We are the tears at prayer.
We are the music in our ground, our life, our death, our air.
It is the subtlest echo we may reach for, whence we sleep;
that tantalizes children with the dream of endless peace.
And so, the life is shaped for death. And so, we are our best
in this, our greatest irony and this, my longed-for rest.
