FAITHLESS

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm...

W. H. Auden

This I can see:

cherry blossom tumbling free

blackbird on mossy green;

Red tulip marrying

blue forget-me-not

in a wedding of wind 

and peace.

Hold still the moment

to etch the memory,

but there will be none;

We are as faithless 

as each other

and by nightfall, 

will both be gone.

- Shaista Tayabali, 2013

Certainty, fidelity

On the stroke of midnight pass

Like vibrations of a bell...

Every farthing of the cost,

All the dreadful cards foretell,

Shall be paid, but not from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor look be lost...

Let the winds of dawn that blow

Softly round your dreaming head... 

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.

If I may be morbid for a moment, I think I'd quite like to have this poem by Auden recited in my dying hour as I'm drifting away like the Lady of Shalott downstream to Camelot. Mind you, I might be so swept up by the beauty of the poem that I refuse to die... "Bring me a pen! Quick!" I'll command, (in a croaky voice), "I've a last poem in me..."

Meanwhile the blossom is being driven away by rain, and meanwhile my major eye operation has been temporarily set aside for a gentler approach; one last gasp before the surgeon decides whether the second tube is necessary after all. I should be ecstatic at the reprieve, but truthfully, my left eye is a torment to me anyway. Some days the little hot nerve centre of pain is so bad I want to be sick, but I try not be faithless. Everything is bright and glorious and green and lit around me. I am trying not to be faithless.

statue above:  'Youth' by Kathleen Scott