It takes time to die

1

The painter, while it plasters its palette 

To temper the hues’ rightful shade; 

The poet, as from words it does palate 

The sounds to gird a hinged cascade; 

With lines on lines, they both capitulate

Their thoughts to tombs, till it’s arrayed

The mirror that their merit can elate.

 

2

To heal the wounds that bubble through the faults

The spirit breeds like arteries,

It needs the currents gushed by the gorge: vaults 

Of wits that sail on memories 

That they might be forgotten. For the halts

And starts of hope to stop, it varies

The time that will have deadened time's assaults.

 

3 

And love, as sweet it is sought and consumed

Better is if it were never-

While swollen joints must taint the whispers bloomed,

Lulling spiders in a flower,

And blot the buds where glutting cankers loomed

Plucked from awe within a shiver

To clutch from joys the jaws where claims are doomed.

 

4 

Life, inherited by inspiration

Through flights that guild the sky it veins,

Dies enacting its manifestation,

As love and art and health, by pains

Seal their scars with screens of dried excretion;

Therein are found unbound constraints

Life can’t end till death has added her creation.