Without You

I know that there is no life without love; Only a brutal half-life, shadowed, a ghost of an existence And I know that there is no love without life And I know, too, that without you – There will be for me neither life nor love, Save for that I feel for my family and for God, The divine force which brought you to me And which may take you away at any moment, If He wishes I know too that if you leave me now, If you slip between my fingers like water, Not all the seas on earth could put out the burning fire of my despair, Nor could the sweetest words erase the sour taste of failure And the ashy grit of your loss And I know too, babe, that though my body would not die, Nor the fibres of my heart, yet my spirit would be snuffed out Like Diana’s blessed candle, And from that day onward I would be merely a shell, An automaton shuffling down an arid and lonely road And the only times when the old spark would return to my eyes, And the old lightness and grace to my steps, Would be when I mistakenly thought I glimpsed your face in the crowd Or when I thought I heard your beloved voice… Then, for a moment, I could reclaim that half-forgotten joy, That delirious ecstasy that only you could bring, And I would glide through the air with the passionate ease of a wild horse My eyes straining to capture your precious figure… And it would only be when I could not find you, When the gilded mist of imagination was dispelled, That the light in my eyes would die to embers again – And my dancing steps would slow to a mournful shuffle And only then would I return to my old lassitude, Your name a bitter prayer on my lips, And your face enshrined until the day I died in the alter of my heart