I
Death, I repent
Of these hands and feet
That for forty years
Have been my own
And I repent
Of flesh and bone,
Of heart and liver,
Of hair and skin –
Rid me, death,
Of face and form,
Of all that I am.
And I repent
Of the forms of thought,
The habit of mind
And heart crippled
By long-spent pain,
The memory-traces
Faded and worn
Of vanished places
And human faces
Not rightly seen
Or understood
Rid me, death,
Of the words I have used.
Not this or that
But all is amiss,
That I have done,
And I have seen
Sin and sorrow
Befoul the world –
Release me, death,
Forgive, remove
From place and time
The trace of all
That I have been.
II
From a place I came
That was never in time,
From the beat of a heart
That was never in pain.
The sun and the moon,
The wind and the world,
The song and the bird
Travelled my thought
Time out of mind.
Shall I know at last
My lost delight?
Tell me, death,
How long must I sorrow
My own sorrow?
While I remain
The world is ending,
Forests are falling,
Suns are fading,
While I am here
Now is ending
And in my arms
The living are dying.
Shall I come at last
To the lost beginning?
Kathleen Raine, 1908-2003 – “Two Invocations of Death” from Collected Poems
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