Instrument of Life

A heavy gravitation's dissembling force

Threatens to dissolve this house of flesh,

Shatter the frail remains of skeletal mind

Or press into some purgatorial night

This withered empty form now love has fled.

All hangs beclouded in unsubstantial air

Where once the sun so brightly did bestrew

Our world with flowers, canopied with trees

Our carpeted path until untimely death

Divided twain no earthly force could part.

And now compelled by tears of loss I drift

In penitential nights and frustrate days

Benumbed by sorrow and by grief belayed.

And yet, despite the darkness of the days,

Amid the movement of mechanic will

To gather all remembrances, impose

A plan of order on this shattered state,

I am aware of Presences that guide

And silence seeking softly to descend

Into the emptiness, the pain-filled Void.

I look upon our human history

And see the homage paid by king and prince,

The temples to the loved one grief has built

And songs of lamentation for the dead.

But I who bring a poverty of words

Unable to express in poetry

Or music that moves our mortal souls to weep,

Hold in the sanctuary of the heart

Remembrance, incense-filled and deep, so deep

Within a granite core unbreakable

Of faith that every breath is God-imbued

And death a humble instrument of life.