I
To say that you are dead?
But you, you lasted just a day — a squiggle.
So sad, so sorrowful was the giggle
of the Lord! I barely could've said
“You lived.” Your date of birth
and the date when your ashes
have cr(e')ped my palm, converge to a dash. Is
your day on Earth
confusing me? In math,
subtracting two amounts
within one day, by all accounts,
does not create a graph.
*) (e') - e accent grave
II
For days are nothing
to us. Just not a thing.
Cannot be pinned
or fed to a scene, unblushing,
days are incorporeal,
concealed from sight
on a meager-white
background. No more real,
days are like you or rather,
what can weigh
so decimated one day
or another?
III
To say there is no you at all?
But what is in my hand
so much resembles you? And
the color of the sprawl—
it’s not a fruit of inexistence.
Who gave the hint? On you,
why is the paint so put, so hued?
Without this assistance,
a mumbling valet,
a lump of words barely
kin to color—I’d hardly
have conceived this palette.
IV
On little wings of thy,
eye-pupils, lashes,
are contoured. In flashes,
the fragments fly
and make display of what?
A bird, a beauty face?
What does your case
portray? Things? Fruits? A Nature Morte:
where crumbs and particles among,
so suddenly a fishing trophy,
like muted sound in a silent strophe,
may stretch along.
V
Perhaps, you are a landscape
and with a loupe
I would uncover a beach, a group
of dancing nymphs. In this escape,
is there as bright
as day? Îr is it rueful
and mournful
as at night?
What an orb explores the sky? And given
the astral figures on this vault
unveiling justly right and fault,
what is the nature of this heaven?
VI
I think you have the features
of this and that: a star, a soul,
a subject—being both
an object and a creature.
Who was that master
with an eye and signature,
who struck on you in miniature
this world, a rollercoaster
that leaves the mind in surf,
where you bear an idea
of a thing, while it is clear—
we are the thing itself?
VII
Tell, why such a tracery
to you was given
for just a day that you were driven
to spend in a lacery
of lakes amalgamated
to retain the space?
And you—at time of chase,
the term so terminated
deprives you of a chance
to flutter in the net,
to tremble in the hand,
and captivate the gaze.
VIII
You send me no reply
not for the reason
of going evil, falling off the season
or being shy,
and not since you are dead.
Alive or dead, God still bestows
on every creature of his all those
signs of kinship and instead
confers a voice so one can pray
and praise the Lord
devoutly with a word
that slows the day.
IX
But you, you are bereft
of this pledge. And strictly speaking,
so much the better: why the dickens
have Heavens reckoned you in theft?
Kept on the list? Do not bemoan
if what your life is worth is silence.
You are more soundless,
more bodiless than time, on loan
is your weight, but on the stage
the burden loading the sound
in the background
defines the age.
X
Not perceiving, not having reached
the age of fear,
flittering the flower bedding above and near,
lighter than ashes, you’ve breached
the bounds of and fly
beyond the suffocating prison
of past and future. This is the reason
why
when you escape
to grassland long for feeds,
the air suddenly accedes
and finds its shape.
XI
So does the quill
when it is surfing
the feint-lined surface
of a notebook still
trusting
the impetus of hand—and unaware of the fate
of its verse where wisdom, heresy conflate—
whose fingers set the pace of and are thrusting
the speech that smolders
quite muted, crushing,
not pollen off the flower brushing,
but burden off the shoulders.
XII
The fate that clips
the term, the charm so twinkling
combined create an inkling
that contorts the lips:
in fact, not saying it more clearly,
the Earth was—glossing over the Turtles—
created with no purpose,
and if there was one, then, sincerely,
the goal was not us.
For entomologist, my friend,
light does not reach to such extent,
and nor darkness does.
XIII
To say ‘Farewell’
to you as to a form of day?
Some folks have brains
so clipped that spell
oblivion. But look,
the only fault that comes in mind
is their having left behind
not days spent in a bed for two,
nor spins
of gloomy dreams, nor periods
of the past—but myriads
of your kin.
XIV
You’re better than Naught.
Or rather, you’re closer, clearer seen.
Yet from within, you’re plumb akin
to it. It’s sought
a new life, it has resurrected,
acquired flesh by your flight;
and that is why
you’re worth a look projected
from the midst
of the daily hustle and bustle
as a tasseled
feeble veil parting it from me.