THE LOVER'S DEATH

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THE LOVER'S DEATH
He who had lived the earth with a firm love
Is now, being infirm, laid in the earth
That covers him with green grass quietly.

Once when he walked the fields, he suddenly knelt
And with an avid gesture clasped the earth.
His sun-lit fingers sifted dust.

Lovers would write their incoherent view
On passionate pages; but he, on pads of meadow,
Wrote with his plow a tongue-tied love.

Fields understood, for when the harvest ripened,
Fruits lay like brown breast for his hands to pluck,
And he with lightness, touched each pregnant stalk.
His house was quiet, like the man who closed
The gate-behind him when the lamplight glowed
He know no woman's touch except the earth's.
We thought it fitting that the sun should touch
With quite fingers the rice-fronds in the field
When he, after a fever, gave himself to dusk
We could not salvage breath, but we could swathe
His body and lay it in the earth he loved
He may return and beckon from a sheaf.

by: RICARDO DEMETILLO