Epitaph Poem by Christopher Shepheard

What is it for a man to die? This world
Of water leaves no other moil or mark
Of his departure than a ripple ring.
A lemming, dropping into Arctic dark
He slips, unwreathed by any harrowing.

By gasps, our joys of infancy are born,
And so by mine his life may be rekindled
Beyond, where all perspective lines are drawn
Into a mote that incandescent, dandles
In the light of vast immutable new dawn.

(1991)