Bobby

Is it possible that I may strive to think Of what has never been Or that such would raise me from where I sink And wipe my sorrow clean Day and time pass but memory remains The archive of our knowledge and our pains Against this bruised part of me your face press Little nephew, and my love finds no rest Your mother says, as if the dead still grow Out of the dust of time, You would be thirty five, could you but know This side of life sublime But I shall never see you stand again Beside the gate, calling my son to ride With you, or play like swallows in the rain His brother came though to be by your side But none can tell what compose that world yet Nor how my flesh keeps faith With me, if may leave its house at my death Leave close its broken gate And free from time and space reclaim being In some place where spirit returns longing For earth within the bars of time, for old Memories that round eternity roll Yet without the pulse of time's cycling pall The ebb and flow that age The lost past living only through recall The shadow on the stage In which we believe, but ne'er apprehend The fading light and the shift of scene again The laws we write as candles in the night A wind broken dream intimating sight Bobby, Bobby, I have no final why Or reason for my tears The deeper things that make the oceans sigh Through veils of misty years As if some deeper wisdom unengaged Ponders something in our frail sorrow caged And yet can find no wing except this grief To weep our life and renders some relief. I miss you, little nephew, and remain still A fan, though no more you Play the ball and let men shout at their will Or sing melodies blue About the earth, and man's injustice to man Nor can I listen the telling of each plan You had, and against this void now I scream This senseless violation of our dream!