Patrick Fernando's The fisherman mourned by his wife?

Answer 1

The fisherman mourned by his wife

When you were not quite thirty and sun

Had not tanned you in to old-boat brown,

When you were not quite thirty and not begun

To be embittered like the rest, nor grown

Obsessed with death, then would you come

Hot with continence upon the sea,

Chaste as a gull flying pointed home,

In haste to see me!

Now that, being dead, you are beyond detection,

And I need not be discreet, let us confess

It was not love that married us nor affection,

But elders' persuasion, not even loneliness.

Recall how first you were impatient and afraid,

My eye were open in the dark unlike in love,

Trembling, lest in fear, you'll let me go maid,

Trembling on the other hand, for my virginity.

Three months the monsoon thrashed the sea, and you

Remained at home; the sky cracked like a shell

In thunder, and the rain broke through.

At last when pouring ceased the storm winds fell,

When gulls returned new-plumed and wild,

When in our wind-torn flamboyante

New buds broke, I was with child

My face was an while telling you, and voice fell low,

And you seemed full of guilt and not to know

Whether to repent or rejoice over the situation.

You nodded at the ground and went to the sea.

But soon I was to you more than God or temptation,

And so were you to me.

Men come and go, some say they understand,

Our children weep, the youngest think you are fast asleep;

Theirs is fear and wonderment,

You had grown so familiar as my hand,

That I cannot with simple grief

Assuage dismemberment.

Outside the wind despoils of leaf

Trees that it used to nurse;

Once more the flamboyante is torn,

The sky cracks like a shell again,

So someone practical has gone

To make them bring the hearse

Before the rain

-Patric Fernando