In Loving Contemplation

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f you think of a relationship
as having a life, and we ever
come to the moment of death -- where
       the life that is dying
flashes in front of our eyes;
then I'll refuse to remember
any series or single undignified moment
that embodies the death of this friendship, instead
       it will be your living memory
that will last for the rest of my life,
and if it dies;
along with all our moments
in their last throes;
I will take the best memory of you with me
as a final breath
to go out alone;

for how can I ever deny you? -- when
       I will remember you always
holding me, as though
I were the arms of a favourite chair
you held to sit down
in loving contemplation; how
your fingers stroked
the very material of me
to abstraction -- and how
       your look would think of me
to fill me with so much kindness,
even to the tiniest, most wretched part of me;
to make me feel as though
I would never be alone again,
even when separated from your body;

        -- and when all else leaves me --
I will keep this undying memory:
how you always held your head high
when a wildness would stamp your spirit;
and how we merged within it:
our practised strokes stirring
our watercolours, to paint the shadows
in sight into masterpieces
of nightly experience;
or how we laughed like children
at the slightest nonsense,
dotingly clumsy in our thinking,
heartbreaking even in the naivety
of childish delight in our eyes
when thoughts brushed hands in surprise;

and if these sweet things
are no longer so in their maturity;
or no longer raise the mind
to thoughts of glory;
nor hold their former power
to quiet any anger
against the damage sometimes suffered
from the need to be loved; then
       if we cannot grow old together,
at least we'll remain forever young;
where our life after
will be a future dream
of what could have been,
or the world we created
now forever buried; with its every city
now a Rome of antiquity;

and if we are to die
before we go any further;
if we never live after this time;
and if time, no longer ours,
will not pass for us,
and if it refuses to mark
that we once lived;
I shall still say it was worth it; -- for
       even if only for a moment,
at least we lived;
and I will be thankful in any death,
painful or peaceful -- as it comes --
if somewhere inside I know,
that until this finite breath
stops the machinery of my heart,
you will always live on in me;
and although we may part, I know
there will never be any loser
to our time together,
except the time apart.

Published 21 April, 2011

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