To death - Ian Wedde

Death takes them all, that’s why

We never see it. Death’s never in

The picture. But everything we see, we see

Because death has. Death took the pictures.

Death looked at Chloe whom the poet

Begged not to run to her mother. Chloe

Ran into the oblivious arms of death.

Quintilius lies in the sleep that goes on

Without ever ending, and the music has faded away

That could have restored blood to the veins of the shade

Death saw. Lydia no longer

Wakes up to hear the sound of gravel thrown

Against her shuttered windows in the night.

Death pictured what lay behind the shutters

And Lydia grew old on the journey between

Her chamber and the dark street where death waited.

O passerby, do not refuse a few

Handfuls of sand to cover up the corpse

Of Archytas. It may be you who needs these rites

Some day, when death has viewed you as he did Archytas,

Who counted all the uncountable grains of sand

On the lonely beach. Death pictured my mother

And my father on the Picton foreshore, cheek by cheek

Under Gemini, twin sons unborn, tinkle

Of jazz from the ferryboat. And death looked at their sons.

Sharpe, I. (Ed.). (2001, January 1). Best New Zealand Poems 2001. Retrieved from http://www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters/bnzp/2001/home.html