Lost & Found

“Cooperate with Rero” (2015) © 劉勃麟 (Liú Bólín)

Elegy for Margaret I Darling of our hearts, drowning In the thick night of ultimate sea Which (indeed) surrounds us all, but where we Are crammed islands of flesh, wide With a few harvesting years, disowning The bitter black severing tide; Here in this room you are outside this room, Here in this body your eyes drift away, While the invisible vultures feed on Your life, and those who read the doom Of the ill-boding omens say Name of a disease which, like a villain, Seizes on the pastures of your flesh, Then gives you back some acres, soon again To set you on that rack of pain Where the skeleton cuts through you like a knife, And the weak eyes flinch with their hoping light Which, where we wait, blinds our still hoping sight. Until hope signs us to despair––what lives Seems what most kills––what holds back fate Seems itself fated––and the eyes that smile Mirror the mocking illness that contrives Moving away some miles To ricochet at one appointed date. Least of our world, yet you are most this world Today, when those who are well are those who hide In dreams painted by unfulfilled desire From hatred triumphing outside: And where the brave, who live and love, are hurled Through waters of a food shot through with fire; Where sailors’ eyes rolling on floors of seas Hold in their luminous darkening irises The memory of some lost still dancing girl, The possible attainable happy peace Of statued Europe with its pastures fertile, Dying, like a girl, of a doomed, hidden disease. So, to be honest, I must wear your death Next to my heart, where others wear their love. Indeed it is my love, my link with life My word of life being knowledge of such death. My dying word because of you can live, Crowned with your death, this life upon my breath. Stephen Spender