|
| This boy, of course, was dead, whatever that |
| might mean. And nobly dead. I think we should feel |
| he was nobly dead. He fell in battle, perhaps, |
| and this carved stone remembers him |
| not as he may have looked, but as if to define |
| the naked virtue the stone describes as his. |
| One foot is forward, the eyes look out, the arms |
| drop downward past the narrow waist to hands |
| hanging in burdenless fullness by the heavy flanks. |
| The boy was dead, and the stone smiles in his death |
| lightening the lips with the pleasure of something achieved: |
| an end. To come to an end. To come to death |
| as an end. And coming, bring there intact, the full |
| weight of his strength and virtue, the prize with which |
| his empty hands are full. None of it lost, |
| safe home, and smile at the end achieved. |
| Now death, of which nothing as yet - or ever - is known, |
| leaves us alone to think as we want of it, |
| and accepts our choice, shaping the life to the death. |
| Do we want an end? It gives us; and takes what we give |
| and keeps it; and has, this way, in life itself, |
| a kind of treasure house of comely form |
| achieved and left with death to stay and be |
| forever beautiful and whole, as if |
| to want too much the perfect, unbroken form |
| were the same as wanting death, as choosing death |
| for an end. There are other ways; we know the way |
| to make the other choice for death: unformed |
| or broken, less than whole, puzzled, we live |
| in a formless world. Endless, we hope for no end. |
| I tell you, death, expect no smile of pride |
| from me. I bring you nothing in my empty hands. |
