unbknown

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
His stars eternally.

--Hardy.

Unreconciled, unredeemed, unbeknown and unraveled. No words-plain or otherwise- will explain it. There's no saying of it, no swaying from it. Literature, music, as a consolation for lost time. Already, by saying time you show how far you've slipped. To yourself, at least. Why, is there an other? But not a return to life, either. Tell me, gentle one, is there a way out that is not a way out? And shall you always be gentle or will you grey, become wiser, keep my yellowing picture stored away, as one does with the dead? One's fate, another's freedom, like steps that never rhyme.

Estranged. But not deeply, madly so. It will pass. Again. You and I know it. And everything shall be as it was before. Except it won't. Things will happen, stars will tic over, the metaphor fade, the song go unsung and you shall ask me once again, me the bungling fool, to unbreak my heart for you.

b