softly I can hear you tread

SOFTLY I CAN HEAR YOU TREAD


Softly I can hear you tread.
Above the softness I feel breath
you’re wafting to me, not yet dead,
but peacefully awaiting death.
I do not mean the death of those
who die and never will return,
but, while I dream and you, too doze,
the non-death of Keats’ Grecian urn,
for we will simultaneously
awake with words that I have said
to you in ode-ious poetry
that’s not beneath, but in, your head.
Death does rhyme with you or me,
as Keats does not with William Yeats;
my words, embroidered cloths, will be
what bonds our two tectonic plates.

Inspired by “Cloths of Heaven,” by W. B. Yeats:

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

The slightly lugubrious ton of this poem is related to the death of Mike Robyn on the morning that I composed the poem.

© 2010 Gershon Hepner 1/27/10