A Prayer for Walking Back
My feeble gifts of prosody
Have failed me in the documenting this,
How one does languish next to me
Near to the door which gateway to death is,
Lying beside me while I stroke her arm
Praying the gods deliver her from harm.
Lord, I am weary, but how much
Moreso must she be wearied, who lies near
In throes of illness. Let my touch
Ameliorate suffering which is severe,
With knowledge sure, that I beside my friend,
Lover and friend, remain until the end.
Happy she is to pass the time
With me; while in these rancid days of illness
My stroking—if no thing sublime—
May lend unto her troubled anguish stillness
If just in spirit. Lord, I pray she eat,
Wake, laugh, and that her heart may strongly beat.
Yet thou perhaps hast need anon
Of such a lovely angel: I too have
Need not fulfilled by anyone
Haphazardly, for she, much more than stave
Merges with me into a single person
Although in only one the symptoms worsen.
Lord, perched between two worlds, I pray
That she may walk back to the living sphere
If for another hour, or day,
And even I may ask thee for a year,
Though naught my present helplessness abates
As my poor pen discourses with the Fates.