Lesley Grapka 1981-2007

Two poems for a departed friend. It's been kind of a fucked up week:

Sleeping at last

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,

Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,

Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,

Sleeping at last.

No more a tired heart downcast or overcast,

No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,

Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.

Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover

Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.

Under the purple thyme and the purple clover

Sleeping at last.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

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The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water

I HEARD the old, old men say,
"Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away."
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
"All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters."

William Butler Yeats