“Adieu”

“Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.” (T.S. Eliot. "Burnt Norton")

 

A long passage rolled ahead

A passage of decades of days

A passage of hopes and no hopes

A passage of aching and aching no more

And one of joy

Of growing

And stooping

And failing falling

Dissolving into earth

And becoming earth

 

And the passage was crooked

With unexpected corners

And remarkable discoveries

 

At the edges

Small glades and bowers

With long grasses

And meadow flowers

And quiet rivulets

Where we could sit

And watch the sun

Submit to its daily decline

 

The passage we walked was crooked

With wild moments

Of crazy chances taken

And madnesses of faith.

 

We leapt from cliff tops

And angels caught us

We danced on wave crests

Held aloft by supernal force.

 

We fought no one

Yet won every battle

 

Your face was crooked

An accident at birth - of birth,

But lovely too

In its gentle assymetry

You were a tender soul

Quiet, an unhappy soul

Unfulfilled, held in check

By prison bars of a petty blemish.

 

The crooked passage was not for you

You yearned for the straight way

A surgeon's knife - a rectified nose

 

Your cell door opened

You stepped out into

The blinding dazzle

Of nothingness

And nowhere

Where freedom is bondage

Nothing is reality

And reality is nothing at all.

 

There was a rose garden

There were thorns ahead

There were pains

And crushing

And birthings

And rebirthings aplenty

 

But they went untested untasted.

Through a door ignored

Along a passage left untaken.