Because you are gone, lost to love and all,
And not even your shadow remains,
I must talk to everyone when I talk to you, little one.
You and I both belong to remembrance:
You, remembered, I, the one who remembers,
The saddest thing the living do,
The mourner walks in a sorrowful trance towards you.
Your little grave is larger than a star
Which holds me, and our planet, and all we are
In its starry burning;
Time, the world turning,
And that motion
The thing that started things, not time.
Because you do not move I must move towards you in my rhyme.
You no longer die. I do.
I am false unless I die towards you.
Down into the unfathomable, I ride,
Like the ancient heroes who swam in hell’s tide,
The shadowy undersea light of Hades
With wavering shadows of dead souls on every side.
Strange valley that waves under the sea
Under the growth of death which cries
Like the crying of cries in luminosity.
But you are not there.
Only the seaweed which waves like softly drifting hair.
Only the darkness which runs
Like fish running, a million underwater suns.
Only a fear
Which is merely a tear.
Only the folly
Of falling citizens who are still jolly.
Only the partially gone
Who wander on.
Only the listening ear
Of a little one forced to hear my song,
Who is not here.
