Are you a mere picture, and not as true as those stars, true asthis dust?
They throb with the pulse of things, but you areimmensely aloof in your stillness, painted form. The day was when you walked with me, your breath warm, yourlimbs singing of life.
My world found its speech in your voice, andtouched 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 itruns; it beckons me on,
I follow the unseen; but you stand there,where you stopped behind that dust and those stars; and you are amere 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 inher cadence of colours.
Had the glimmering dusk of your hairvanished in the hopeless dark, the woodland shade of summer woulddie 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 breatheunaware into our forgetfulness, filling it with music.
You havemoved from my world, to take seat at the root of my life, andtherefore is this forgetting-remembrance lost in its own depth. You are no longer before my songs, but one with them.
You cameto me with the first ray of dawn.
I lost you with the last gold ofevening.
Ever since I am always finding you through the dark.
No,you are no mere picture.
