Poem of William Hermanns

                     Mabel Farewell
                                In Memoriam

You vanished from my side,
yet every breath I breathe is yours.
From spring to winter we have walked together,
and now you are gone.
Yet my heartbeat has matched yours,
my eyes are dry, my pen shall weep.

Where is the voice now that would echo God's;
"If you rise with the wings of morning, I am there.
If you make your bed in the abyss, I am there."?
Your voice has gone, and with it the comfort of these words.
How do I know that you have fused into this God?
When I descend into the dark, are you there?
When I mount the wings of morning, are you there?

Where are you, what have you become?
I ask a void and there is no echo.
What fate is now awaiting me?
I call from a chilling pit.

If only I could retrace the way we went together for so many years,
I would subdue my impatient intellect which perplexed and harassed you, and walk on with you holding the lamp of spirit in my hand.

But instead I stand here holding your ashes.
No memory so sweet can give you visible form again.
The past of man, how dead!
More dead than are his ashes.
No miracle, no prayer can retrieve man's last five minutes.
What has been done is done.

Each day your smile, your voice,
your patient ear would tender me
a pillow for my tired head, and now
your cold hands press my head into a mold that smells of decay.

Each day your presence warmed me; you glowed with love.
And now memories hang grey curtains before my eyes.
In pulling them aside, I stir up clouds of dust.
And I am blinded — blinded as all who try to raise
the curtain of death.

The anemia of loneliness is my fate.
I feel it sap me.
The dust of my years more and more resembles the dust
of the earth.
Nothingness looms.
What is man's fate called on the other side?
On this side it is called —
how cruel — finality.

                            William Hermanns      [P197]