Tuesday 1 May 2012

Rebegot: Navigation

   in orbit with a blighted child, a man reels between two women, two worlds....
            Split screen four hundred years old:
            in orbit with a blighted child, a man
            reels between two women,
            two worlds,       
       no earthly tool to fathom the space between.    
            Rolling towards him, a waxy alien thing,       
            the colour of the moon,
            corpse borne on volcanic ash pillows,
            while, in a corner he cannot reach,
            the dark-haired wife he loved,
            elegant, reserved,
            black ribbons on her dress
            and round her slender arm,
            sits, in contemplation
            of world without end
            or hope,
            not looking at him.
            In mourning for them all all,  
            lit only by the lustre of her pearls,                      
            her abstraction is unbridgeable;
 .          he knows he will never catch her
            as she shrinks to a tiny dot
            in memory.

© Pippa Rathborne 2012

Images: details from Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of his Wife, by John Souch c.1635, Manchester Art Gallery.