The Servant

Remember that servant with the generous heart
you were jealous of—let’s visit her humble plot.
We really should take her some flowers, you know.
Our poor dead ones must surely suffer so,
and now October’s bitter wind and rain
have stripped the trees and scoured each marble stone,
they’re even more left out. It’s such a slight
the way the living snuggle up at night,
while they lie still, devoured by gloomy dreams,
no pillow talk, and no one in their arms,
frozen old skeletons the worm’s let go,
feeling the steady drip of melting snow
and the century flow by, while no one cares
to clear the withered flowers along their bars.

And if I saw her sitting calmly there
by the singing fire at dusk in her old chair,
or found her crouching almost out of sight
in a corner of my room some winter night,
come from the depths with that grave gaze of hers
to watch her grown-up child with motherly eyes,
what could I say, seeing the slow tears well
and spill from the hollowed eyes of that good soul?