Wednesday, November 11, 2009

You died young, you who died in autumn

You died young, you who died in autumn,
a silent sudden death, leaving a sudden silence.
I search for your face in my collection of
memories, I search for the last time we met,
when our eyes did not betray the finality
of fate and parting.

I see your clear face, the long nose,
the receding line of your hair,
your acrimonious wit, your smile above all
and the acceptance of fate and your
listless destiny.

I remember too the days of sunshine,
of snow and afternoon laziness,
in the playgrounds of our unbecoming,
of youth and what now is only death.

And now my friend, you lie buried,
covered with dew and rain and snow,
with damp, dead and fallen autumn leaves,
wet leaves and tears on your grave.
you left far too abruptly, too soon
and too suddenly.

The above lines are written in the memory of a dear friend who died recently in a road accident.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

yath manz che ne zan 'dag' kenh.

maleehagul said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MG said...

If i knew how to write lovely poems, poems of grief, i would pen the agony his death has left and more so how haunted i am since then.
i couldn't find the pain.

Roxana said...

i don't believe that art can help to sublimate pain, even if many artists express this point of view. or perhaps i am not made to be one of them. or that remembering the dead makes the absolute horror of their parting less horrible, somehow bearable.

and how could one talk about such a requiem from a pure literary perspective? would it matter? perhaps it matters, since a bad poem, a kitschy one, might be construed as an offense to the dead.
and i marvel at your poem, i couldn't have written it with this intense degree of precision, sharpness and restraint. but since it's difficult for me to talk about this marveling, i will just keep your words inside my heart and cherish them.