To Jake

To Jake

 by Eunice Tietjens

You are turned wraith. Your supple, flitting hands,

As formless as the night wind’s moan,

Beckon across the years, and your heart’s pain

Fades surely as a stainèd stone.

 

And yet you will not let me rest, crying

And calling down the night to me

A thing that when your body moved and glowed,

Living, you could not make me see.

 

Lean down your homely, mist-encircled head

Close, close above my human ear,

And tell me what of pain among the dead—

Tell me, and I will try to hear.