A LOVE SONG FOR ASH WEDNESDAY
Darling, our dust,
Which death with other dust will bed,
On Wednesday last,
When, mea culpa, mankind fed
On common matter, common thread,
Went privately instead.
Your shadowed smile
At length in shadow-play crossed mine,
To hold me while
Mouths full of ashes sang Amen
And bone with bone in doom’s dustbin
Clapped heartbreak in.
Cold serpents pealed,
Like whistling flutes birds lighted off,
Bare trees grown old
In the dead springtime took new leaf.
For the rest of his long-winded life
About us, death was safe.
His time’s to waste
Who will, ere long, make waste of us.
Why, then, this haste
To lay unsettled dust? What use
Do we rehearse, what truth impress
But, naked, nakedness?
This much is ours
That soon dispersed and much the same
Will crowd, of course,
His subconventions of dark loam ;
But upright, quick, far from our home,
Sackcloth wears tiresome.
Wind shall not sift
These well-banked ashes quite so soon.
While time is left,
To sleep supine we’ll lay us down
Beside, still prone to entertain,
All ways, what lies between.
– John Malcolm Brinnin
Advertisement
