F O R Y O U
To the crawl of cruel time slips by trembling,
With an echoing keyboard nocturne,
We suppose you're simply dissembling
We suppose you'll somehow return.
These notes play as you've teasingly tuned them,
With the fork of your vanity days,
But these strings, solid metal, marooned them,
In the void where your young song decays.
Just the shadows from childhood remaining,
And a temple rejected by pride,
So you forge from the field, life retaining,
A firm Will from the autumn inside.
Just as whispering, untrimmed old gardens
That are pictured instead of the pond,
So the music of late snowfall hardens,
As it harbors from fate one so fond.
So that easiest echo recoiling,
Sure would safeguard the sleeping motif,
Which was formed someplace, sometime with toiling
Before Thebes and proud Troy came to grief.
With the purpose to stay with us ever,
Not a splendor but in modest stole.
With the purpose to make kin life clever,
In the light of one kind human soul.
* * *
R E M E M B E R
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me
by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go,
yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day
You tell me of our future
that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then
or pray.
Yet if you should forget me
for a while
And afterwards remember,
do not grieve:
For if the darkness
and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts
that I once had,
Better by far
you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember
and be sad.
* * *
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