Lover's Gifts XLII: Are You A Mere Picture

Are you a mere picture, and not as true as those stars, true as

this dust? They throb with the pulse of things, but you are

immensely aloof in your stillness, painted form.

    The day was when you walked with me, your breath warm, your

limbs singing of life. My world found its speech in your voice, and

touched my heart with your face. You suddenly stopped in your walk,

in the shadow-side of the Forever, and I went on alone.

    Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it

runs; it beckons me on, I follow the unseen; but you stand there,

where you stopped behind that dust and those stars; and you are a

mere picture.

    No, it cannot be. Had the life-flood utterly stopped in you,

it would stop the river in its flow, and the foot-fall of dawn in

her cadence of colours. Had the glimmering dusk of your hair

vanished in the hopeless dark, the woodland shade of summer would

die with its dreams.

    Can it be true that I forgot you? We haste on without heed,

forgetting the flowers on the roadside hedge. Yet they breathe

unaware into our forgetfulness, filling it with music. You have

moved from my world, to take seat at the root of my life, and

therefore is this forgetting-remembrance lost in its own depth.

    You are no longer before my songs, but one with them. You came

to me with the first ray of dawn. I lost you with the last gold of

evening. Ever since I am always finding you through the dark. No,

you are no mere picture.