It's Sunday, which means a slower than usual day for me. I've spent too much time preaching and writing this week, writing and preaching.Time for a poem, which says more in a few words than most sermons say in many.
I've talked a lot recently about remembering. For many gay folks who lived through the bitterest years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s--years in which we saw friend after friend die--remembering has a special significance.
My closest friend from grade school through high school died in those years. He has no grave marker anyplace. His ashes were scattered in a faraway place he loved. For his funeral program, his parents chose to print the text, "The wages of sin is death," prominently on the front cover.
When so many people die so quickly, and often so young, the challenge of remembering is enormous. In those years, I began to challenge myself not to let a single one of my friends go unremembered. This is the same challenge I am putting to myself regarding the gay youth who have been killed lately.
The following is an epitaph I wrote for a friend who died of AIDS in 1994:
Epitaph for L.
Falls so strong
Across the warm brick of my fireplace
As this sun,
Today,
Gilding and fretting the wrinkled chilies
I've hung upon the firescreen
To dry.
I here,
And you there,
Watching the same sun rise,
Loop its splendid arc
Against the sky,
Then sink with wounded things
Into the pool of night
To nurse its strength
Until the coming day.
Before you died,
You told me of the different life
Your fate had made for you.
I pictured you
Cat-indolent, hunched
Athwart your garden seat,
Lapping milky sun
While butterflies fought flowers round you,
And mockingbirds played morning chase
Across
What you saw then,
I only glimpse.
Where you've gone now
Is dark to me.
But this day's sun,
Its shaggy mane standing
Stark against my walls:
This sun I see new-eyed
Because you did not live in vain,
Old friend,
My dear departed heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment