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.


poem and photo from Thirty Birds