For the Living Left Behind - Frieda Hughes

No one dead who loved you 

Would wish your future years dismembered 

Against the rocks of their departure. 

They would not sentence you to the guilt of betrayal 

For any moment they weren’t uppermost in your mind 

Nor would they wish you whittled down like a stick 

To pick the stony teeth in the open mouth of abject misery, 

Daily, until you are nothing left. 

No one dead who loved you 

Would want your still-breathing carcass 

To be lost in the wilderness 

That spans the two worlds of the living and the dead, 

Where you are neither dead nor living. 

They would not applaud your misery, 

But would weep to watch their loss 

Made pointless by the waste of you. 

The dead become a part of us; our skin, our bones, our thinking; 

Their existence is continuous in us 

And the best we do in everything 

As we move on from the moment of their passing. 

Step back from the graveside where nothing flowers: 

Do not undo the best they did for you. 

Frieda Hughes