Day Moon

Piglet

October 20, 1955 - March 19, 2003

Picture taken March 16, 2003

in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China

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The face of night turned inside out,
Peering pale into day,
Out of its realm, out of its depth,
Wan and pale as camellia petal past its prime.

An incongruity in the heavens –
A gash out of the blue –
Through which night’s outrider slips,
Herald of darkness in a world of light.

Like your death, dear heart,
That burst upon us through
Some terrible rent in the fabric of things,
Too soon, too soon,
Casting shadows for substance,
Trailing gloom where once sparkles grew.

How shall I endure this ghastly inversion?
How accustom myself to such an altered sky?

No matter.
It’s all words – images and metaphor –
Searching for surcease, for a way out
Of the vast emptiness your passing left,
Yearning for any rag end clue
To where you might be now;
How to reach you. How to touch you.
Any talisman will do.

Your bones are insufficient for the purpose.
Crumbling fragments in a silken bag,
Cold as points of driven hail,
Too ivory white, too incomplete for impressions,
They speak not.
They move not.
They’re simply naught, nought, not.

The golden circle of my wedding ring gleams and glints
Amongst those sharp shards of potter’s clay
With the same futility the silver circle of the moon
Expends as it tries to brand its face,
A bizarre tattoo,
Upon the blazing blue of noon.

Two crosses and a wooden cat settle deep,
As ineffective as my love – or my regrets –
Or any other holy totem I can conjure.

You are gone. Irretrievably.
And no day moon, no desperate invocation,
No burnished cross
Leaps with the reflected flame
Of your extinguished light.

And yet ... and yet ...
I hear you in my head;
My thoughts sometimes glimmer and flare
With a strange glory,
Ignited by the ancient hope
Of a son that shines forth in darkness
And in whose radiance you, too, my love,
Retain a sure and certain substance.