Home

Summer 2007

Spring 2007

Winter 2007

Autumn 2006

Summer 2006

Spring 2006

Winter 2006

Fall 2005

Summer 2005

Editor's Note

Guidelines

SNR's Writers

Contact




Death in the Sickroom
 
Who knows more than children
that death leaves its own disagreeable malady
in the minds of the living siblings?
 
All the wringing of hands in the sickroom,
the necessary prayer, the clasping
of hands held in resignation and despair,
 
each man and woman – ultimately alone
in the houses of their upbringings,
ineluctably aware of their own demise.
 
They talk in careful whispers, even now,
behind the shuttered windows,
where the human family gathers in unity
 
of purpose, whilst the bespectacled doctor
and bearded passer-by are never far
enough away from the apprehension
 
of their own untimely passing;
this is how it is with the pain of separation,
when we look into the green rooms
 
of loss with their polished wooden floors
where we turn our backs from the dying
if only for a moment, we see beyond
 
the wasted remains of the long endured
sickness, we see, at last, the unburdened heart;
this is what it is to love, this is the divine.



An Ending
 
And then it happens, another star in the light universe goes out
and the star gazers are baffled by its demise –
thinking as they did that it was such an immature star.
 
From nothing, through nothing, to nothing (says the philosopher) –
we are alone here, this much we know, without seeing
the quickening that would leave the night sky dark forever.
 
And then it happens, in that not too distant place
where linear time is measured in moments not aeons –
the heart closes to the possibility of connection.
 
And the thoughts of lovers were yet to declare
an interest in creation beyond the reach of the naked eye,
give birth to the incessant beating of their own ending.







Copyright 2007, Mark Murphy. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws.
It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.



Mark Murphy, born in England, studied philosophy as an under graduate and poetry as a post graduate. His poems have appeared in magazines in Austria, Germany, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Eire, America, Canada and the UK. I published a small collection of poems, Tin Cat Alley (Spout Publications). He's looking for a publisher for his manuscript, NIghtwatchman And Muse.