I sit by your bedside
watching your dying.
Only Love
nails me to this pain.
I unable to escape
your dying.
I tell you
Irish legends
& Hans Christian Anderson
as you become
again
(if only for a little while)
the child
you used to be
once upon a time
when wonder & delight
were new
as daylight.
“Tell me Lir! ”
“Tell me the Children of Lir! ”
I tell
of how
they are turned into swans
& the loneliness of eternity.
I too knit nettles
to break the spell
throw the garment over
your cancer’d body
so you can
return again
to being
the human
I have known.
This dying is cruel
beyond belief.
An insult
to your life.
I love you so much I would kill you
if I could kill you
but I...can’t.
I want every breath
of you
not to be your last.
You journey to your death
dancing with your pain
my little mermaid
my little ballerina
I guard
your dying
a Constant
Tin Soldier
as you become
foam
foam
on the sea.
Just a day ago
sucking a sultana
I held
on the tip of my fingertip
telling me to call your name.
“I love
living in your voice! ”
“So nice...so nice! ”
And I a blind Prince
wandering now
lost in the fairy tale
of your Death.
I close
your eyes.
kiss the last warmth
of your lips.
*******
Being Dragged Across The Carpet By The Cat - A Tanka
You fall on the floor.
Carefully I brush you up
returned to your urn
you sit upon the mantlepiece
gazing at the setting sun.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Having held one I loved in my arms as her lips tunred cold and the eyes closed for that final time, and the last breath came...this touched my heart more deeply than you will ever know. Cancer IS the Grim Reaper, Death.