Bones have beauty
Dark Child
Dark child – born of the night,
Who will not accept – death as of right
In your hands.
Child of the dead hours who found
The running ghosts in your head
Spoke less but offered
Certain testimony – circling.
Who in the dark when one light
Was a sinister star,
Could not accept that – or less,
And now light too many candles to forget
The totentanz your heart beats (archetype of dance)
Over the flagstones of worn years.
Dark child – you must know
Bones have beauty,
And the gull’s cry is the wind’s work,
And the frost at night
Just pearls a bright moon scatters.
And fear has no cold, being of ecstasy or near it.
But fear of fear
Ah! That chills.
And dark,
Dark has dignity, exhilarations
We despise at peril.
For dark does not mean
That necessary death is dread;
But in my child walks alive;
And dark – Yes, dark laughs
Bringing (strange thought)
A darkest happiness.
© The Estate of Ronald M. White
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