D for Death

Dead Men's Love

There was a successful Poet,

The was a Woman like the Sun.

And they were dead. They did not know it.

They did not know their time was done.

They did not know his hymns

Were silence, and her limbs,

That they served Love so well,

Dust, and a filthy smell.

And so one day, as ever of old,

Hands out, they hurried, knee to knee,

On fire to cling and kiss an hold

And, in the other's eyes, to see

Each his own tiny face,

And in that long embrace

Feel lip and breast grow warm

To breast and lip and arm.

So knee to knee they sped again, 

And laugh to laugh the ran, I'm told,

Across the streets of Hell......

                                            And then

They sudden;y felt the wind bow cold,

And knew, so closely pressed,

Chill air on lip and breast,

And, with a sick surprise,

The emptiness of eyes.

A beautiful man (Rupert Brooke) wrote this intensely haunting poem in 1911) and I am so delighted I got my hands on a collection of his poems and memoir this morning.................