Thanatopsis

To those who fold this coil into a swan
and float their dreams upon cool Lethe
I give you this remembrance of sun
and pray that you may unforget.
Every eloquence of sleep hangs on
the language and the gayest voice
of gladness. The memory of song,
the holy rite of smile to rejoice
the day - these begin my prayer.
First, in every silent meditation
there is the soft intake of air
the pause before the first summation
of this one and only imperfect life.
The endless truth of suffered pain,
dishonor, lies and thee, strife,
the all-beholding, trapped in a grain
of eternity's unbroken spine,
weep the hourglass into their last breath.
And thee, the all-beholding, sign
of my sweet apocalypse, a test
of sand to smooth away the rough
until I might shine up from the sea
reveal the gold of your honesty:
that unearned faith is not enough
to wager for the value of man's soul.
O Strife, you are the balm for blight
that soothes away the wretched peace.

Hear me now before my long sweet night
under this bleak dying oak, pondering
reaching desperate roots and leaves
crisp brown on winter breeze wandering
the creamy cool cemetery where I sit
to embrace the scent of rotting offal
on my wasting corpse. A putrid pit
that proves the terms of life's lawful
end - a gruesome tale to a shuffled plot -
new grass, fresh marigolds, and stone.
My melancholy leaves the choice of what
and why and who and then alone
to surrender to the gray ocean's touch
to in speechless spring of youth
full step out more grave and overmuch
unleash the meaning of the truth:
happiness - that is not an ending place
but instead the merely mere selection
of fingertips to read the shards of face
and leave the answers for close inspection.
I proclaim this the rocky mountain's crash
and grow the words inside my head
like glacial snow to slowly flow and smash
away the remnants of the summer's dead.
A river of ice, and then a giggled melt
becomes the torpid flood of river through
barren dry red land and emotions felt.

Tell my dry bones, the hungry worms few
 will see with living eyes, tell them each
as the light flickers, the ebullient lease
of poetry to man is forever out of reach
when laughter smooths away the ease
of breath, and irons ruffles round your breast.
Tell my eyesockets: the vision of hell
that my darlings lost to cold unrest
might become the blades of grass to tell
the every-damned to be more holy and
accept their lot. Nature is her own
and no man has sovereign to demand
wind and hill, bitter love, empty toned
songless song to sing in haunted cry
want of this - the uttered all sublime
Strife - the only hope that I
can dare to live and live again in rhyme.
Hallowed dead: This is not darkness.
War, suffering, the agony of desire
in all their awful frigid starkness
are the fuel for your soul's blue fire.
Rejoice, my brothers, my sisters, my kin
walk your festering death with pride
be the silty flacid knowledge sin
is unoriginal, ever since old adam died.

Chant breathlessly this mantra for the sake of art:
Death is life, and beauty's death is but a start.