New Poetry : “Touching Ephemera: Rome, April 2009″

How we like to avoid facing up to the fleeting nature of our lives in this risk-averse, safety-mad society of ours!

The poet John Keats looked the ephemerality of life straight in the eye in the writing of his own epitaph:“Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water” .

Keats is buried in Rome. Thus it feels appropriate to mention him in introducing Sophie Agrell’s reflective poem, written in that same eternal city, which has seen so many phases of human culture come and go….

Touching Ephemera: Rome, April 2009

You cannot pin down your immortality,
Trap it in objects for other eyes than yours.
Descendants, strangers to your young, fresh self
Will see the playbills, turn over the stubs,
Finger the objects wonderingly,
Both the familiar and those to them historical,
Will speculate about who and what and where you were.
But they cannot know the essence of your presence,
The scent of the flowers, taste of ice-cream,
The laughter of friends untraceable
Who shared your treats, your journeys, your hours of every day.
They cannot know the silence of your heart,
How moment linked to moment in your eyes,
The dancing of your lively mind.

Your day by day delights are there,
Outlined in objects in simple silhouette,
But only glimpses of your life’s texture, its density,
Its complex rainbow weave, remain,
Faded as an ancient tapestry.
Your immortality rises, flutters, dances and is gone,
A butterfly in the future sun.

 

Sophie Agrell

(sophie_agrell@hotmail.com)

Sophie describes herself as “…. an escaped medievalist who watches the world, delights in its beauty, and grows roses…..”

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300 words copyright Anne Whitaker/Sophie Agrell 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

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