Remember me, when words fail,
when my face softens, hair and skin fade
Remember me, when memories are gone,
hold them in your own mind and sing my life to me, joyfully.
Remember me, all trials and sufferings, victories and festivals,
labours and laughter, my lessons hard-won – are yours now,
to remember me.
Across the vastness and darkness
I happened upon
a humble kind-hearted one
The doors were wide open
many creatures entered care
But some left in wonder
pacing, staring over
how to cross the blue yonder
without paying the fare.
Acknowledgements: Cheyne Geligan (RIP 2003) ‘Till the Sky’ by The Simpletons
Come cling to me like mist scented trees
Thou scattered droplets absorbed, restored
Fount o’er leaf tips to forest floor
Endlessly nourished ‘fore scorching breeze
“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume;
when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book,
but translated into a better language;
and every chapter must be so translated;
God employs several translators;
some pieces are translated by age,
some by sickness, some by war, some by justice;
but God’s hand is in every translation,
and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves
again for that library where every book
shall lie open to one another.
No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main…
any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
No man hath affliction enough
that is not matured and ripened by it,
and made fit for God by that affliction.”
Meditation #17 By John Donne From Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1623), XVII:
Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.)
It’s easy for the enemy
to strike at the heart of me
when I wear it on my sleeve
So rather than hiding it
I cover with
amour mesh of steel
righteousness, no do-good
but right feelings, intentions
thoughts, beliefs.
Devotions to
One
One-self
One-another
Nothing else matters
Count the stars of heaven 