While Heaven Wept – Epistle No. 81

Mark how our shadow, Mark Movits, mon frere

One small darkness encloses

How gold and purple that shovel there

To rags and rubbish disposes

Charon beckons from tumultuous waves

Then trice this ancient digger of graves

For thee ne’er grapeskin shall glister

Wherefore my Movits come help me to raise

A gravestone over our sister

Even desirous and modest abode

Under the sighing branches

Where time and death, a marriage forebode

Twixt beauty and ugliness ashes

To thee ne’er jealousy findeth her way

Nor happiness footstep, swift to stray

Flitteth amid these barrows

E’en enmity armed, as thou seest this day

Piously breaketh her arrow

The little bell echoes the great bells groan

Robed in the door the precentor

Noisome with quirsters prayerful moan

Blesses those who enter

The way to this templed city of tombs

Climbs amid roses yellowing blooms

Fragments of mouldering biers

Till black-clad each mourner his station assumes

Bows there deeply in tears