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When all my youth in years be
When all my youth in years be
Fallen at length
And you see me
Lying trunk and bough naked strength
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
You shall hear then the solid sullen bell
Announcing to the world that I have fled
From this vile world, with the vilest worms of earth to dwell
When on your bed the spangled moonlight falls
You know that in my place of rest
By a running rivulet where a bird keeps her brood and nests
There comes a divine glory to the cemetery walls
My marble tomb bright in dark sheen appears
As slowly steals a silver flame
In a sway of lights and shades game
Along the letters of my name
Inscribing the humble living of my fame
And over the number of my years
A soiled vase bares flowers wane and wilted
And stones around with salt of tears are gilded
My soul in its clay cold bed lay forsaken
In the place where I sleep and never to be waken
The daunting haunting piercing owl’s cry
Shall burst upon my slumbering ears
Not a single seraph hovers in the sky
While I lay wrapped in my shroud of fear
The mystic sliver swims away
From off your bed the moonlight dies
And closing eaves of wearied eyes
You sleep till dawn arises dipped in grey
As time claims its bounty my friends become scarce
And the letters of my name will fade into less
With blackest moss the letter-plots
Will be thickly crusted one and all
Over grown weeds with blades tall
Claim my grave with girded entangled knots
As the splendor falls in the cemetery wall
They say every soul has a star
That glimmers and flickers through channeled wind far
Till it fades and fails and die
So the soul converges to its archetype in the sky
Yet no angle clad in light by golden heaven gated
None which clad in light my spirit waited
To embrace me into the divine eternal sky
Here below the yellow autumn leaves I lie
Who would have thought that thus
To be thrown under the dust
He who had man under what pretensions and why
He made him think he was not make to die
Spirits of the dead haunt every day’s last hours
Roaming amid these yellowing bowers
At eventide they dance in macabre lock
Mocking the sobs and sighs of mourners in shock
At times kind rains their vital moisture yield
And swell the flowers beds and the harvest of the fields
The river at the cemetery hill strengthen along
And bides his willows to listen to the shepherds’ song
And the sun raises her energy for the trees to have
As the shepherds lead their flocks around my grave
They sing while besides the shaded tomb you mourn
And the sumptuous squirrels your stature shrine adorn
The kindest words are said yet now useless grown
Kind words inscribed on the fading relenting stones
In the mute world of under we scream to heaven and to earth we deplore
For we are dead and love no more
The silver swans take rest our hapless fate to bemoan
In notes more sad than when they sing their own
I always hated the dreadful cemetery behind the little wood with old trees wrought
Where funerals were led in the field above through harsh dry heath
The hills around it were horror stricken and I was a little boy distraught
watching the echo there whatever I asked her answer was: 'Death'
Were you there the day I was put down to the pit? Was there love in the passionate shriek
Love for the silent thing wrapt in shroud that made false hast to his grave
Covered with a cloak, as you saw me and thought that I would rise and last speak
And rant and rave at the world and at God as I always rave
You saw the hands tightly intertwined
Pale palm against pale palm laid
Bereft of any living movement they consigned
What the frozen lips left unsaid
The days at the cemetery
Are anguish and weary
But would you keep yourself aloof
Nor wander once into the cemetery ways
I lie here not lacking your harsh reproof
Yet missing the golden largess of your praise
When in the darkness over me
The blind four handed mole shall scrap
Under the dark lush bush tree
And the visitors wreath their heads with doleful crape
But you? When you come pledge me the vinery grape
And now here approach shake hands across the brink
Of that deep grave where I was thrown
Shake hands once more; I cannot sink
So far – far down but you shall be known
By me in your voice and I will reply from below and the birds shall sing
As the moon’s splendor falls
Along the grass in the cemetery walls
Come back and take hold of me
A sensation that I long and love
Come back and take hold of me
When body’s memory awakened
And old longing again moves into the bloodless veins
When lips and skin stir and remember
And hands feel as if though they touch again
Let Time sooth you and your scares heal
As on my clay bed his twiggy weeds grow
Come when you feel but only when the days are still
And at my headstone bow and whisper low
And tell of yourself that I should know
The damn dawn down over my grave fly away!
As East and West without a soul with suffocating breath
Mixed their lights like life and death
To broaden into a boundless day
And when you read these lines remember not
The hand that wrote it but he who loved you namelessly
And yet named his love to you sublimely in a knot
Out of whispering tongues which foul pure love carelessly
I would rather in your sweet thoughts be forgot if so
Thinking of me should make you woe
Even if by chance you look upon this verse
When compounded I lie with mortar and clay
Does not so much as my poor name rehearse
But let your love even with my life decay
Unless you bare your sorrow unnoticed, a nameless moan
Lest the world around mock you and me after I am gone
poem
by
Isaac Ziv
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