written upon hearing the death of a man not known to me
By Izak R. Crafford

 

I
A perfect drop in the river of time
flies in its completeness to shatter upon a rock:
carnage of the ungraspable progress of fate.
The flow is neither halted nor checked,
the mourning hidden under masks
covering few faces streaming by –
purposefully yet with no intent
through treacherous rapids to die.

II
What is nothing is long
and what is long is nothing too;
counterpoint, dissonance, unresolved harmony wandering from key to key
and false cadence to false cadence never to end,
each note, each phrase interminable,
yet nothing
between no beginning and no end
though forever cannot be conceived
and a framework must be imposed
though it wavers and falls away
when civilisation turns his face aside:
ashamed for not grasping any of it.
Exaltation in not knowing,
abject submission to a fate called god
wavers too and dies
to leave not’ but a river of endless notes.

III
Single sounding tone
born of circumstance and circumstance decreeing too,
a spec of imperfect contribution to an imperfect harmony
the interval and the sound ambiguous,
the divine and the abhorrent conjoined
to make, to break and then to die –
it grows sweet only in retrospect.

IV
Departure leaves an empty void,
though it makes a friend more certain
in the grip of memory and, at last, possession:
what could never be held nor understood
crafted into a statue to be kept in the heart:
not the friend we knew, but completely ours,
safely subjugated, held behind bars.

V
A perfect drop in the river of time
flies in its completeness to shatter upon a rock:
carnage of the ungraspable progress of fate.
We plough on through the endless screeching wilderness,
losing and gaining and making art.