A Rose For Us (To Yeats) Poem by Nellie Isabelle Steward Cooper

You cannot know
For you will be dead
When the fleeting hint
Of perfume's shed

And the petals fall
And your hand is ice
And your lips are stone:

You do not go to your grave alone

And where is the scent
Of the roses going?

It has fled to somebody's head
To blood streams
And knowing

Something besides flowers and tears, you know
This fixed stance gels.....no more can you grow

To add some final flourish
To beg some grace,
To heal some wound,

To say
Anything you did not say before

There is no more
Into the wind you will be going

And blind in the sun, and blowing
And what the world knows
You will leave to their knowing.....

Though it be a lie down to the last crowing....

Except..... there is a faint something....
In somebody's heart, when they hear your name
A something for somebody
That will not be the same