450 and 451
My skeleton approached me here just now,
his eyeless face I knew at once was mine.
His gazeless look met my own quickened brow,
and death myself delivered me this line:
“Have now you life to die for? Are your bones
as worthy of their rot as I would will?
See how the marrow leaves me,” my wight moans,
“see what you did, this frame, deplete or fill.”
And saw I, then, the emptiness within
that ghastly thing, that upright ugly thing,
that was so full of naught, so fat of thin,
that had no ounce of life, to death, to bring.
Find something then, to die for, and permit
yourself to fill these bones and live for it.
~~~
Leave it behind and it leaves something back
inside your mind and within your faint heart:
there to remember and there to keep track,
there to leave lessons, and there to ache art.
Leave it behind and you’ll find you are full:
empty of hand, and yet full in your head.
Room you have made there for longing to pull,
room for some meaning, allaying your dread.
Hold it at cost, for it cannot be kept,
leave it behind and look on the next day,
keep it, or try, and find, while you have slept,
the fates and the foibles have took it away.
But leave it by choice, and have it for all,
you’ll keep it if you but by mem’ry recall.