Beyond

“Beyond”

I don’t want you to die today…
The same as you say
You have died in my arms every day…
I don’t want them to take you away.
Heaven hasn’t been what it once was—
All that was made gold I see as only brass…
What angels call jewels, I see as broken glass.
(I see as broken glass).

But what are the pieces that hold together
Such a thing as you said was Forever?
Nobody warned this thing called “Ever After,”
Unfolds without you in my skin—
But with shadowed ghosts of seraphim
Who come to carry you away,
Past the stars that caress the dying breath of day.

What tidings from thy dreaming, ye ill forms that lie?
What have you seen in dreaming, longer now than I?
They tell me there’s a song you sing
Of a soul that knew but suffering.
Do you sing an end for he whose grave would bring
The flowers of an untroubled spring?
Can you tell me in your song
If this soul brought to the world no wrong?
Can you tell me, if, in the distance
There will be a painless existence,
Without storm upon the shore?
Or is it over? Is it over now forevermore?

© 2022 Marten Hoyle