Quick to Live
For Alys Thorpe
Quick to live and quick to die,
That’s how we live say you and I,
But even mountains crumble fast
Stone can flow and time is vast
Look with some asperity:
They are like rollers on a sea,
They fall in eons of explosion,
Shore-bound breakers in slow motion
A crow that walks the telephone wire
Has all the life it can desire,
If it be wild it has no name
Or knows it not if it is tame
All are lost in this great sea,
Mountains, crows and you and me,
Man, stand far away and look,
This is the view the wisest took
But someone said he saw a place
As big as time, and wide as space,
Within were chapels, candle-sticks,
And all had flames that stood on wicks
Although they burned were not consumed
In that enormous God-lit room,
For One who loves will not submit
To hopelessness or yield to it
Love is wider than the sea
And longer than eternity,
For while a soul has lost its way
The candle burns and He will stay
Pavel
April 19, 2011
