To Margot Heinemann John Cornford (1915-1936) Heart of the heartless world, Dear heart, the thought of you Is the pain at my side, The shadow that chills my view.
The wind rises in the evening, Reminds that autumn's near. I am afraid to lose you, I am afraid of my fear.
On the last mile to Huesca, The last fence for our pride, Think so kindly, dear, that I Sense you at my side.
And if bad luck should lay my strength Into the shallow grave, Remember all the good you can; Don't forget my love. Grieve in a New Way for New Losses Margot Heinemann (1913-1992) And after the first sense "He will not come again" Fearing still the images of corruption, To think he lies out there and changes In the process of the earth from what I knew, Decays and even there in the grave, shut close In the dark, away from me, speechless and cold, Is in no way left the same that I have known. All this is not more than we can deal with. The horror of the nightmare is that it evades Your steady look, steals past the corner of the eye, Lurks in the sides of pictures. Death Is fearful for the fifth part of a second, A fear that shakes the heart: and that fear lost As soon, yet leaves a sickness and a chill, Heavy hands and the weight of another day All this is not more than we can deal with. If we have said we'd face the dungeon dark And gallows grim, and have not meant to face The thin time, meals alone, in every eye The comfortless kindness of a stranger- then We have expected a privileged treatment, And were out of luck. Death has many ways To get at us: in every loving heart In which a comrade dies he strikes his dart All this is not more than we can deal with. In our long nights the honest tormentor speaks And in our casual conversations: "He was so live and young - need he have died Who had the wisest head, who worked so hard, Led by his own sheer strength: whom I so loved?" Yes, you'd like an army of Sidney Cartons, The best world made conveniently by wasters, second rates, Someone we could conveniently spare, And not the way it has to be made, By the loss of our best and bravest every where. All this is not more than we can deal with.
