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"Ask not for whom the bell tolls"
21 April 2004
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by Evelyn Cresswell
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From the mist of unknowing
all that shapes and forms
our belonging to life,
comes the sureness of death!
We keep it distant, unfamiliar
not encouraging close acquaintance,
a stranger at the back door
not invited into family intimacy.
Now here, it storms in uninvited
untimely, rudely, smashing promise.
Like kaleidoscope glass
life falls into different shape.
An accident, freak as the mortars
that take out children going to school
or lovers eating by candlelight
in Basra, Baghdad, Barcelona,
makes death at once intimate or unrelated.
"There's been an accident by the bridge
a young man killed, Wayne I hear",
Suddenly, it's Orpah's boy.
Words spark out connection
and are conduit to a single condolence
We are a community folded into grief
like hills at dusk deepening into each other.
Out of the dark of unknowing,
the sickle moon signals its fullness
the first star shines and the night waits
to offer its gifts.
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