Stranger Death: Sacred Poetry

by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole

Trans Solar World Battery image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA

Stranger Death

Death a creeping stranger be
When he comes to call,
With a way that’s rather free
And a foot that falls
With its echo on the walk
Where the grass is thin,
And the neighbours of him talk,
He who enters in,
And none see until the last,
When the rush of life has passed.

“Always I’ve been waiting there,
Just outside the bounds,
In my cold and lightless lair
With my snouting hounds,
Hounds that sniff the end of breath,
Coughs which choke and catch,
My summons, I, reaping Death,
Who your words will snatch,
And take you where men are mute,
Down a dark and winding chute.”

Comes a stranger also then,
One whose tread is light,
And whose voice brings comfort when
Friendless is the night.
A vagabond he might seem,
Tramper in the wild,
And his eyes in fever gleam
With a mischief mild:
In his heart he carries life,
For the world a loving wife.

“Death you robber get behind,
Lay down in the dirt;
In my garden I you find,
With my babes you flirt;
Your dark chambers I abhor,
Cringe before my lamp,
As I force your bolted door
And dry-up the damp:
Like a shadow on the lawn,
Away you’ll fade, come the dawn.”

Then the sleepers Death had sunk
In the icy ground,
Started from their prison bunks,
Woke, and looked around:
“What lush meadows here renew
Where the blight had been.
Blooming flowers thick with dew,
And the grasses green,
Make a kingdom by him ruled,
He who had the wisest fooled,
Now in glory seen.”

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From the Like a Lamb collection.