Dead

Walk in worlds that we don't see,
sing the songs we cannot hear,
dance the steps for us unknown;
so the dead are yet so near.

Laughing still they are nearby,
hidden though and disappeared,
sight unseen but sometimes felt;
joy resounds as we do fear.

Wandering through other realms,
living there as we do here,
travellers beyond this world;
life at last without a care.

Colours burst in different ways,
music soars beyond our ears,
mountains, fields and forests too;
no longer any need for tears.

The dead can see us living still,
within this place which we call real,
and yet which is less real than there;
in death, at last, we truly feel.

II.

There is death in life where the heart still beats,
and yet we walk as if dead, entombed in flesh,
which can no longer feel; trapped in mind which
can no longer think; held in moments of pain as

if the hurling, hurting seas would drown us at any
moment - but they do not, even as we wish they
would, to put an end to this existence where grey
time plods, dark days stack, one upon another and

bright nights bleed bitter fruits from dream-trees
which send down powerful roots into the soul,
and throw up, brittle branches which are dead
to being and bring stark, acid blossoms for a

becoming which can never be, because now I
walk and breathe and eat and sleep as a living
corpse, the flesh desiccating, the limbs stiffening,
the eyes dulled, in a closing of consciousness

that desires only the bony touch which can
bring an end to it all; a passing from what is,
into what has always been and what will be,
where laughter sounds the rhythm of heart

and where pain which passeth all understanding
is no more, but is caressed and comforted by
a peace which has been denied for so long and
which whispers at the door of the stony tomb.










http://dversepoets.com/2014/11/04/poetics-the-book-of-dead-man/