B: At birth the essential spirit, cleansed and kissed by water,
Shines forth pearlescent.
R: All too soon, despair
Despoils and blots its luster. Cruel human laughter
Scorches, twists, distorts it. I could bear
The blindness and the ignorance, the joyless mirth,
But craved sweet mortal Beauty as my air....
B: That hour has gone, all days are done, and every breath
You spend is one you will not miss as you expire,
Rejoining all those lost ones under earth.
R: Lady! Blessed lady: what do you require?
B: I conjure you: surrender and forgive.
Come now, essential spirit cleansed and kissed by fire
And holy grace, immortal love’s restorative.
R: As one whose glance steals back to a familiar shore
and weeps for parting, knowing he must leave to live
I follow you....
Both: To new shores shining from afar,
Unbounded and perpetual, where all we love
Surrounds us amid the eternal blazing stars.
R [spoken]:
And at this last of the book of my memory,
beyond which is little that can be read,
there is a rubric, saying:
“Here begins the New Life.”
Fin.