The Sunset Over Life

One should be peaceful, I suppose,
When one's life is passing.
But I never asked that this should
Happen: here is bitterness for the asking.

The sun is going in the west,
The last one I shall ever see.
The colors are lapping from the west.
I turn my face from beauty.

I shall never have the chance
To finish half my treasured poems.
I shall never have the chance
To give all the visions homes

That clustered around me when
I walked the garden paths,
And pleaded to be made real
With phantom cries and laughs.

And now I shall have to refuse,
Though through no choice of mine.
I must turn my back on them
To contest the call of time.

I write "contest," but what mortal,
So small, and sickly, and frail,
Can contest the coming of death
Or the ending of life's long tale?

I cannot; but no less bitter
Than wormwood will I be
As I sit here beneath the last
Sunset I will ever see.

They tell me I will be immortal,
That my poems will not let me die.
I will find life in the written word,
Beneath an endless sky.

How can I tell them of them,
All the lives I meant to fashion,
The visions and the shining dreams,
The chance of wildest passion?

All gone now; all are wildly gone.
I shall never have the chance
To spray my words across the pages
Or see the visions dance.

It is not the same to live
In words I leave behind me,
For though I may be held safe
There, and death will never find me,

I cannot create new visions,
And I cannot strive for perfection.
Though I have not done so before,
Perhaps this time reflection

I will find after all these years,
Reflection of song or of desire.
I have felt it sometimes before,
That tumbling rush of fire,

That blasts through me and leaves me
Dazed and without breath,
Eyes closed in a life so sweet
It gives me reason to fear death.

And now the sun is going down,
And I can only write
One final time, to feel the fire,
And stave off the longest night.

The sun is fading into darkness.
I lay down my last work of art.
As I turn to face the west,
I can feel the beat of my heart.