Mimus Polyglotus

For I, that was a child, 
my tongue’s use sleeping, 
now I have heard you, 
Now in a moment 
I know what I am for, 
   I awake

             — Walt Whitman

  I

A man before a million souls to me
Suggested through his sorrow he could smile
Because the one he lost had taught him well
Of celebrating death.  How can that be?
But how he didn’t say, nor did I see
Immediately that within his smile
He had a million tales of life to tell
As one who lived to tell and told to me.
A single face within a passing crowd
Who sings of moonlight on a distant shore
Can echo joy and pain, and in each word
Can radiate a purpose and a creed.
Here, then, the mourning soul with smiles to bear
And hear one who recalls a mockingbird.

 II

My father’s pastor in another time
Spoke to his congregation: “Celebrate
The life well lived that walks through heaven’s gate
And leaves a lasting trail of footprints.”  I’m
Still resonating to the funeral chimes
And eulogies and yet I hesitate
To smile at death; I stand before a gate
That begs a deeper reason for the rhyme.
Prosaically: It’s hard to celebrate
The end of things, and one that is no more
Is nothing but a fading memory;
But even here the moon and waters meet
And waves give testimony to the shore,
And the mockingbird begins to sing to me...

 III

A poet in the evening of his youth
Found revelations in a song he heard
Along Manhattan’s autumn shores: a bird
Delivering translations of the truth,
Repeating what the waves had left him with
Forever, what the boy had always heard
But never understood, a single word
Unveiled within a moonlit whisper: Death.
He called it strong, delicious, steady, sweet,
Superior and final, then he swore
To conquer it and begged for more of it,
And in its wake he knew what he was for
And in its power he pledged to celebrate,
To sing eternally and evermore.