Donne Died Too Young to Know

“The Island” by Oznat

 

an old man is an island
reduced to himself
to the hard wretched crags
and the desolate soil of aging
cut off from his yesterdays
oceans of time
span the distance
to lands of his life
to his people and places
and purpose of days

the long continent
built with his hands and his heart
hides behind the horizon
hull down lie his passions
the memories made
while engaging the world
joyous peaks barely visible
under the edge
of a shriveling sky

he is far from the knell
of the funeral bell
yet can’t help but hear it
a resonance inside his bones
tolling tolling
the clang of his name
the interior noise
of his personal pain
thrumming nerves
to the terrible tock
of a terminal clock

and it all comes to pass
without stirring
the powerful surface of time
from its heaving
no slightest disturbance
diminishes
mountains and valleys
who ebb and then flow
by cold breath of the moon

and it all comes to pass
quite apart from the main
never troubling
the uninvolved
indifferent minds of
the rest of mankind

 

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No Man Is an Iland by John Donne

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.