A Love Song To Death

Let me sing then a love song to death.
Mightier and darker he is than life's wilderness.
Black is his color, like the night rushing down.
Red is her color, like the sunset's vermilion.
O quencher of fires and queller of breath,
Come to me; still my quick heart with your kiss,
The sweep of your sable and silver-hemmed gown,
And claim me as you have claimed more than a million.

And yet let this claiming be special, O my lord.
Let me look into eyes calmer than the night between stars,
Eyes that know and cherish the mysteries shady
That haunt the minds of mortals still caught up in strife
Of the fire and the blood, the dance and the sword.
Let me look on beauty that nothing mortal mars,
Because you never have been alive, O my lady.
All other things flash and vanish through life,

But never hast thou; wait, in silence and strength,
And they will come to thee, however they live.
Mortals have sought immortality so long they think
They have created something thou hast not seen before.
And yet, wait; we will come, no matter our lives' length,
Crying or praying, we will take the gift thou wilt give,
By the knife of age and the hanging rope, the hemlock drink
Or gnawing cancer, we will return to what went before:

The darkness that has always been and always will be,
The nothingness that is part of thy beauty so divine.
Oblivion is thy cape, and cessation thy wimple,
And thine hands move like a dying bird's fluttering wings.
Come; softly and yet strongly I sing of my love for thee,
And will break the glass window, cross the invisible line.
My lord, my lady, my lover, teach me things so simple
I will wonder I lost them, or thought of them as things.