Wake


by Alys Thorpe

OH she was lordly lovely

strode like the Queen of Asia,

through the wide cloisters

up the stairs. Beauteous

in movement, glossy

with brave intelligence

silent and noble like the passing

air. Beauty a mystery,

ungraspable, unfathomable,

one stared as if at deformity,

an effort, simply to believe

what sight, what senses still were left.

I saw hundreds that day, dozens passed close by

some touched, even examined me,

but only she unmet, unnamed, untouched

I remember,

long after the day was done,

the rough shawl draped round her head,

the wake of her passing, blessing,

and the touch of dread.

Her presence.

Can't be gone.

Can't have changed to this sullen malice

following following on,

down through the ages only, lonely,

can't be torn from us, like the heart

torn out of the land,

flesh so intimately

changed by the hook and knife

ka rent from bah and soul

from the cave of the heart,

born for a blast of drossed silver

to the intrusive gaze of an alien mind,

precious for the covers and the cases

and the age the overshaded grief

meant some artistic touch, some hollow

gesture, ignored, ineffectual,

slung aside.

The wake of her passage,

distracts, covetous of knowledge

ignorant science, lords in their own eyes

stumble tumble, walk out walk out

into the desert seeking what home

in the violence of heat, stumble,

grope in the noon day, life !

too strong for such frail souls,

holiness burns, love shrivels

those who already think

they've plumbed the mystery

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