The nave of the church is dark. She is striding alone
to the altar, where the bier is standing.
Her hair is shimmering golden in the reflection
of the candlelight lighting the body.
Hesitantly she kneels and takes his hand,
so cool, so strange and yet familiar,
and for the first time since she knew him she feels
his touch, even now filled with pain and renunciation.
*
Others have held the wake in the night before,
others have cried for him.
For her no tear, no grief was meant,
as he was neither relative nor friend to her.
But still her hair glitters with the same golden hue,
still his gaze held the same gentle glow.
And suspecting what she was never meant to suspect
she is kneeling here now, praying for him.
Her mother wept until her eyes were red,
and bitterly cired the man whom she is calling father,
they both cried for faithfulness taken away by death
and for a well-kept secret.
Others just cried for the man,
the most beautiful, most courageous knight the court had ever seen,
whose smile won every heart
and who was at the side of everyone in need.
But he never wholly gave himself
and he was the ruin of all the hearts that wooed him,
and forever his radiance was tainted by
a sombreness no one could ever penetrate.
never the smallest smile, or spoke to her.
During all her life he was never
really near, but neither really far from her.
And to her parents he was brother, he was friend,
a light that warms and opens horizons,
and nothing is ever like it seems,
and the truth is known only by those who love.
*
The nave of the church is dark. Silently she is kneeling there
holding his hand and looking at him,
and she cries for this stranger, who so strangely
loved her and avoided her and who was her father
and forgives him and hopes that he, too,
will be able to forgive himself.
Crystal 07.10.2008