Merrily, the Lady in White,
Did not stop for her death.
Death comes at her call;
Beyond the precipices and the pieces,
Resting at the bottom of a bottle,
In the plastic faces of dolls,
The static of television sets,
And in the council of demons.
Death wants only to take life;
Separate the body from soul,
The poetess from her pen,
The Artist from creation.
Death wants to be so lucky,
As to devour wishes idled and forlorn,
And then inherit the world,
Not as they have made it,
But as it is lost to itself.

But in death and life revealed,
My life was not lived for death,
Not for time or man’s folly,
Nor scrap heap or idle dream,
My life was lived, to live,
Neither rightly or wrongly,
Only virtuously within myself,
The latitudes at my discretion,
The River of my Life,
Flowing through the Valley of my Death.

I see, to see what dreams may come,
And not what madness has wrought,
That any blind man may glimpse,
That which I tease rightly,
Or wrongly into being,
So that I will have carried more,
Than the world upon my back,
I would have known the world,
Had carried me to the page –
Not to waste time, or be wasted,
But to save creation from wretched fire,
From hopes baited, with endless desire,

That which is already taken,
Upon the pale horse beyond,
Past the veil of sight,
Without need, nor right,
Watching, heedless in waiting,
That which is death, should hold.
And wait. Until living is through.