When you were not quite thirty and the sun
Had not yet tanned you into old-boat brown,
When you were not quite thirty and had not begun
To be embittered like the rest, nor grown
obsessed with death, then would you come
Hot with continence upon the sea
Chaste as a gull flying pointed home,
In haste to be with me!
Now that, being dead, you are beyond detection.
And I need not be discreet, let us confess.
It was not love that married us no affection,
But elders’ persuasion, not even loneliness,
Recall how first you were so impatient and afraid,
My eyes were open in the dark unlike in love,
Trembling, lest in fear, you’ll let me go a maid,
Trembling on the other hand for my virginity.
Three months the monsoon thrashed the sea, and you
Remained at home; the sky cracked like a shell
In thunder, the rain broke through,
At last when the pouring ceased the storm winds fell,
When gulls returned new plumed and wild,
When in our wind-torn flamboyante
New buds broke. I was with child.
My face was wan while telling you and voice fell low
And you seemed full of guilt and not to know
Whether to repent or rejoice over the situation
You nodded at the ground and went to sea.
But soon I was to you more than God or temptation.
And so were you to me.
Men come and go, some say they understand.
Our children weep, the youngest thinks you’re fast asleep:
There is fear and wonderment.
You had grown so familiar as my hand,
That I cannot with simple grief
Assuage dismemberment.
Outside the wind despoils of leaf
Tree that it used to nurse;
Once more the flamboyante is torn,
The sky cracks like a shell again.
So someone practical has gone
To make them bring the hearse
Before the rain.