I sing of him whose heart had hung Above all struggle or wonder Of our broken woes. Far oh far Beyond our little lays he'd sung. 5 Yet here's no death, no reason, and No loss. No loss? No loss but less Of friendship than I' lief confess, A faded castle, fallen sand Built up upon imperfect hope 10 Toward another sky. Lost, the dream; Lost the meaning once deemed more firm, The promise more than swami's rope. We'd had heaven's ascent held fast: What we'd reared in reckless dawn 15 As though God's own brave secret shown, Looms a gibbet now dawn is past And sunless exile welcomes me. === I craned from pole to pole, with pale 20 Hurrying ear I sought the sound Of a friendship I had unfound, Lost in the maelstrom, in the gale. A song no longer sung, but known 25 Down in where the singing starts, soft As an infant's finger held aloft To hold where the wild wind had blown. Where my limb was cut there grew A pain; where my shadow'd followed soft 30 No image of myself now crossed. What I was was lost, was through. No zone of knowledge could commend Discovery of how I'd begun Nor tell me if I'd lost or won 35 In this struggle without end. Now I knew I was lost; lost. Uncentered in the storm that blew Through all that was of me, all through. Lost is what I was-- at last, at last. 40 === Is it a death to know you gone, Separation's wail at the verge Where tide on tide may pile and merge While I sigh unsolaced, alone? 45 It is death, or death's live semblance To trade high love for sorrow's hole, To peer in pits for the absent soul, Braver laughter, a brother's glance. Yet others before have I lost, 50 Their unsyllabled all made death's, Pilfered lives that in coffins rest, Nor can I reckon up the cost. === 55 But, yet, I've reconciled such loss, Made grief my dish and my dessert, And lived to love again and cry hurt, Heedless of my passive loss. The hearse triumphal in the rain 60 And heaven all one weltered bruise That threatens tears, nor offers dews, Takes hope from throats, gives hymns of pain. The author's pen cannot note the deed That seared the author into ash; 65 He only sings how feels the lash: The sting, the wet, the heat, the need. === I found little upon my mount That mattered, neither goods nor goal; 70 Sharp hurt came sharp upon my soul: A little arrow; it little meant. My eyes centered where they were sent, Zeroed on that nothing --All.-- Some nadir in the sphere, some pall 75 Kept light from my looking yet. I was the shadow cast down at noon, Crushed by the heel that casts it; Weary of my little life unlit, The dark I knew knew I was no one. 80 When a friend departs the sunny vale, When a cloud rolls over the hill, When water past pebbles ribs and spills, When sun beyond one sunset sails, Whose grief shall give that going song? 85 Whose voice vaunt such diminishment? Whose richness re-give what had been lent? Whose keen increase such goodness gone? === When I am of my little life 90 Bereft, and my soul in plumes Of darkness goes, as through a catacomb, None I leave behind in life Shall weep as I have wept. For I have known my second soul, 95 A far braver, brighter soul, That looked within me, turned, and left. === To rob a grave not yet stuffed With friendship, only full of woe 100 For one no longer friend or foe Or anything, though breath still puffs And somewhere past horizons dim He lives on like a mute reproach In caustic quiet, silently loath 105 To burst with bounty I need from him. Unanswering wall, unhuman hate --Or so I paint him, as I must, Who have no knowing from old trust, As though Christ transfigured my Greek fate. 110 I stand before the empty hole I lay myself within the dirt I say a prayer for my hurt To maggots, and my breath is stale. If I were all of misery made 115 And could confound my final hour With a tear, then no more power Would he have than a shade. Instead there's lodged the sovereign sting Of hope betrayed, hope that will not 120 Die, though hope's death and gory rot Would stop the hole of my being. === Hope that thrives in everything alive 125 Susceptible to inward gusts And outward groans and manly 'musts,' Hope that moves what cannot move or strive Keeps crimsons bright around my wound, That will not heal or cleave to kill; 130 Damnation is: I was born to feel. Hope bathes these horrors with new words. Still, if he comes, even to curse The whole acquaintanceship of our days, No growling hour's pinched of praise 135 Save when absence is our discourse. Come again, thou ravaging tide Who had a slope of easy friendship, A lope like a gull, a lazy hip, Till you rolled away and tore my side. 140 === What resolution will recompense His companions for the pang Of his departure? What chimed gong Will make his going make new sense? 145 How after harrowed grief resolve To live whole again? Does the leaf Shorn from the trunk that gave belief Ever re-ascend to former love? Here's no parable to mumble; 150 We make our dying sounds above The grave that garners all our love: The open door unable To accommodate return. Let us gather where we are blown; 155 Let us hold what we do not own But a moment, and make return. === How many hours had snow blown In at the unattended window 160 Snowing in to no more be snow, To flood the floor like thoughts none own. An echo came beyond the fall Of welcome foot or voice gone now; I followed soft to the night lawn 165 'the street was empty, and the long hall. === An ache beneath the pain of years Brings pang and poignancy to the fore; What I feel was felt before 170 Dear earth brought forth her sufferers. As when a dove shakes off the rain Whisking silver mists to haloes Suspended in cool fogs of woe, Thus softly I stand in shine and pain. 175 === Told I would not come to be beloved I cried an unrecovered tear; Told 'death--was all I had to fear, I wept; wept to be so beloved. 180 To've been in wind and run in sun, To've slept in shadelight til all's one, Doubling frolic with unbecome, Is love enough when day is done. If all into oblivion 185 The body goes, trailing gestures Of absent soul in redder rose, I'm content to have once begun. Nothing did as I did expect. No quiet council of surmise 190 Left me other than most unwise; A life grown rich in retrospect. === When the briar brave entwines my grave, And heart, kept cold, is fallow laid 195 Beneath the green and twisted braid What rose will come to show me saved? What rose from all the horrored heart Will fly harried from the dour hole? What emblem of the buried soul 200 Will rise to tell my harrowed part? If twixt rounds of panting fight or dance All is 'catch our breaths' to kill again And love is all love unspoken We're but two tigers in a trance 205 Who pace and leer and wait to leap Who've lungs for roar yet none for love; Who toy and tear the departing dove And too late let our anger sleep. === 210 The book is closed and sleep has come To lie beside me as I lay Thoughtless at the end of thoughtless day, A blessing of oblivion. I dropped the book that had told me: read, 215 That had made a wonted offer As if neither knew the better: Knowledge is sorrow, living or dead. The mind too worn by day's report, The day too wronged by mind's own war, 220 Apprehensions made real by fears That had lain still in latent thought Now wild as waking woes Ascend to startle sleep itself And mold from nothing nightmare's self; 225 With silent step they come by ones: Wind at the casement inks with creaks What I had kept in lightest sketch, Through all the day of 'do-and-fetch'-- Wind at the casement makes bold and bleak. 230 Pale and leery, alone in bed; Alone in bed, pale and leery, Unawake and lively-weary, I hear a tune that tums with dread. The untended hurt, pushed away 235 By strong strife of mind all day Tweaks and twinges as I lay; A small voice says what it has to say. === Forgotten friend! forgot beyond 240 The soul of solace in the cold, Friend whose tale is yet untold Resurrect! and before me stand. Let memory chalice the ghost Spilled to rumors beyond recall; 245 He lives yet, he did not fall, Yet his bodying has no host. What is this absent creature then Who lives to others, shares their views Of russet sunsets, yet eschews 250 The gravid face of his old friend? Damned by discord, torn in twain, Yet present to the fervid pitch Of inner sense, a lively nothing which Makes all mem'ry the mem'ry of pain. 255 Reveal! From shadow, gloom and gloam Stand forth! and be again alive; Here, where your memory still thrives, Your dear self has yet a home. === 260 When the windowpane fills with light Sepulchral as a ghastly sail Full of dead wind that will not fail Despite the dark, despite the night, And skin and breath half swell with sweat-- 265 Though in itself that has not been My own experience of sin-- Some knot inside the soul relents.... There in the insistent mist A burning mast in a gull-grey shroud 270 Churns water and divides the cloud And rides the tide as I did insist. Be you friend or be you fear, Palely limber in the halflight, Almost fiction in false midnight, 275 Stand pale beside my bed, be near. What you have to say, I would hear Who, rash and rough in life before, Sent from out this very door Your solider emissary. 280 Wait, ghost, do not fade or fail! What you speak I will not unsay But hold in holy memory; I would hear, would feel, your tale. === 285 Voiceless the vision vanishes, An untenanted guest again Far gone along the moonlit plain, Sourceless as our dearest wishes. I stand untongued beneath the blank,-- 290 At the balustrade, reach for dark, See nothing there to hand me back The loss of hope that's left me blank. Piteous moon, shed tearlike light On those who live below the clouds, 295 On us who circle in our shrouds, Though no thing's worth its being bright. Better still that grief... grief has come And tears the hair and scrapes the eye, Better we ourselves should wish to die 300 Than no feeling at all should come. === In my heart, a false fable starts That 'tween two friends, so fair, so fast, No rill of envy could ever pass, 305 No trickle winter could make crack. Our summer was a million days That on two shared pulses shone; What was thought in the heart of one The other's tongue found fit to praise. 310 Autumn's harvests had us chasing feasts In distant dales neither knew; The same sun and moon we saw Overlooked our separate trysts. December should have seen us come 315 Sharing triumphs round the table Laughter-laden as a fable, Strong in joy to a single home. Too-far our wayfaring had swum, Crests and valleys and the green roar 320 Held us apart forevermore, Derelict, adrift, who had clung. Iron frost the great granite breaks, Too-cold sap splits the broadest tree In solemn singularity; 325 Alone falls the proudest rock. === If some grave power left us here, Solitary seekers in the night, 330 Lonely voyeurs of the light, Shall we blaspheme what strength appears? Far better, broader, more intense To see the sign of good in things; Amid haphazard waywardings, 335 Love what loveliness may commence. If ever a bright butterfly Has brought you unsuspected joy Neath the canopy dark destroys, Bless its shimmer and bless that sky. 340 If ever before brown defeat Some glower gives some hint of glow, Or all you are's not all you know, Listen still to that heart, that beat. If ever when wind's against us 345 Snarling sails that'd happily snapped You feel amidst the clip and clap One soft kiss blow, then don't resist. If higher than twin towers--crowns Your hopes have ever heralded 350 Only to be trapped back and barred From achievement and from renown, Listen still to what hope had heard, Lift aloft for the light you saw In premonition of your fall; 355 Seek heaven though it be in shards. More lies in our looking there With lovely eyes, tho' full of cares, With hearts that have not ceased to share, More of consequence than despair. 360 === Though parted by pernicious fate And left no solace when you left, By your absence of solace bereft, Yet still I loiter by the gate, 365 Looping hopes on echoes cool and slow Of your departure seasons past; When you went, you went at last By going where you had to go. Still I beside the gate am left, 370 Still I lean and lick the dust; Still I wait, as still I must Until some change unpains my breast. The agile curfews of the night That wipe away the palest day 375 And light's burning words lightly unsay Cannot cross out what you left bright. The moon that trod old empires down Or saw two loves woo, two loves despair Casts no changeful spell on my care 380 That carves the ages on my brow. === Electra longs for her lone ideal Impatient with passion on her stoop, Unarmed before the vicious troop,-- 385 Cries from poor girl's woe for her weal. Antigone, tender to her core, Going round and round in grief Mills herself but sad relief: To kill the state with grief too pure. 390 What value vaunts from remorse, or worse? Justice, with adamantine edge Turns crystal from a shaken tear Solidified from sighs, or worse. In a breast gone god-abandoned 395 What good does grief reveal? What idol does a tear revere? I have not earned what rosaries condone. Never another lie to 'get along,' To manipulate the powerless, 400 To add confusion to their duress; Never deception from the strong, Never after venial convenience to strive But all must be benign transparency And facts alone the obduracy. 405 I resolve to struggle and to live With difficult fact and effortful truth. === I looked at life through stainless panes. My friend and I then grew rife 410 And in clumsy love had strife: Life's transparency in the littered lane Lay sharded. Never again Would sky suspend its peerless blue As though some heaven loved we two, 415 For we two loved without sin. Each sweet self-enmansioned soul Came to battle in dire array But would not fight, yet would not stay --And each departed for obscurer goals. 420 What finer, more enlightened path Might Life lend our wandering ways Than sheltered friendship as a stay Against galled wounds that make us wroth? What against gauche chance may make amends? 425 What but friendship has the power To wipe the brow in feverous hour-- What else may ease us ere the end? Nothing else has friendship's function Nor can solace the absent pain 430 Of friendship gone, not come again, Friendship faded to a fiction. === Echoes of some diviner love Reverberate a quartered heart 435 Confusing fonted loves with lower wants, Donning longing robes of doves. There is something then in something gone, A talisman to shake again The index of eternal pain; 440 A hole in every good thought won. The grief, the grief is fresh to me As yestereve when enduing mist All the upswayed landscape kissed, Showing in shining deep tears unseen. 445 === Can friendship live when friend has left, When keel and sail are rudely stripped, A smiling skull without the lips, Love of its softness unpossessed? 450 What new faces shall my face seek That found these fellow faces false? What mirror mimics faces lost? What redemption beyond such breaks? Does that departed friend, unseen, 455 Unknown and homeless who's home's in me, Stop his step and think what we Once were, on all that once had been? === Then politics spilt its dirty milk 460 And still its deadly little tread Marches across my wounded head, Itching the sutures though of silk. As though one caustic loss, relentless In its riptide on my pride 465 Were not hurt enough, my side Was laved in vinegar and piss. The hand that'd helped now held my throat As though to show me how naive One ever was to believe 470 In friendship's blotting antidote. So he fingered his own quaint cause Until his heats gave fervid birth To a dogmatic cross unearthed, A cross whose crosshairs sought my source. 475 === Enemies made by mild reproach Never twice discover love (Like God, gone missing from above) 480 Since the sin itself was mild enough. So I stare and swear in lonely rooms Filibustering dust bunnies, Each summation a swift surmise, Readjusting juries in the gloom. 485 There is no answering passion In fractious pastimes of the mind Twirling and untwirling twine While sown unseen grow meaning's lesions. I am a shadow in a weft 490 Of darks, a nullity who his own Nullity long long has known, And now no nothing here is left. === Life's a marble in a bowl: 495 All agony but a rolling chance, The bullfight no longer a dance Of misdirection toward a goal. Life's a story with no moral; Condensation's circles yet 500 No ring of meaning can beget. Race to rail against the choral Loves hossannaed by the mass Of men, who see their circle Flout timid time and weary wrinkle, 505 Whose dreams go buried by the grass. Know that your own nothingness A nothingness stays, a felt Backdrop or dead pelt Stroked by hands half calluses. 510 There's no lesson to be learned From all the tarnished marvel Of our mayhem, still the larval Stage of chaos for we damned. Impotent in the pouring wrack 515 Of disaster's icy hail Stripping deep with red-hot flails Splintered skin that'd been my back. I stand in draining anger, Half-aghast to understand 520 Myself am likewise but a man Dreaming Fate is not a stranger. === Was it for those echoes alone That your proud shout came and went, 525 That my near airs with your name were rent? Was purpose pipping in the bone Ere clear breakage lamed the story, Castling attacks to faulty defense,-- Recovery all the recompense 530 For our having augured glory? Unsmiling in slings and crutches, Fools blown brown by windy time Who'd been sheer kings of summertime Grimacing at lightest touches. 535 Solemn cortège of cannons mum Roll evermore in breakless line: Wavy Life a funereal sine Unending, and airless, and come. Tacit disaster's stripped to trim belief, 540 Memory turned to slave to serve The forward unknowns of our curve; This is given with what gives grief. === You have moved in love to others, 545 To new unnull pursuits you go In restless faith those whiter flows Follow you to fuller waters. My faith's poorer, my grasp infirm Upon the tugging rudder 550 That guides me to my uttermost; I fear I sail far more in harm Than in health. Where is your dear hand Steady on the trembling tiller?-- Steering clear to vaster endeavors 555 Beyond horizons, past sight of land. Where I go's no more than where I am, Nor faith nor hope proffer roses To blank the claims of fear's supposes, Or dare me greater be than man. 560 May bride and child and wealth be yours And all the winnings dreams suggest,-- If I were but an infrequent guest I'd deem myself the treasurer.
From the collection "The Departed Friend"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.