[Turner Cassity]

After She Left


After she left her absence filled the place.
For months her perfume lingered on the air,
The mirrors held a memory of her face,
Her quickening shadows lengthened everywhere,
No door he tried but opened on his sorrow,
No window but a picture of his grieving,
No day held out a promise of tomorrow
And each tomorrow brought no dreams of leaving.
Leaves, they were falling too. He wished to fall,
To fall and fade and die, a sweet transition
From more to less to least to bugger all,
Such was the gravity of his condition:
Squaring the books and shining up the cross,
Executor and Parson of his loss.




Comments:

The mixture of masculine and feminine rhymes may be a mistake. He should have said “bugger all” from the first.