With you as my eyes I have seen

With you as my hands I have felt

With you as my wings I have flown

With you as my shelter I have hidden

 

With you as my sun I shone

With you as my thunder I flashed

I fought with you as my sword

I believed with you as my scripture

 

You were the cup from which I drank

The scale in which I trusted

The riverbank where I settled

The garden that kept me there

 

Here you laid me down

 

When you breathed out I breathed in the life you left

and your eyes opened a passage

with a quieted body I entered the forest path

and to me appeared life in full, debarked

 

And beyond the forest a burning horizon spanned across

There was a peace I found in your breath

Yes, there was a peace I found in your breath

 

And I rested my hands on your pain and your thoughts

and felt them enter my strong body and heart

which I made refuges for your pain and your thoughts

 

 

Yes, you were the cloud and I were the soil

and my love was the dew that rose in the morning and evening,

and yours the rain that fell, day and night

 

Yes, you were the wax and I were the wick

And your love was the blue flame burning

and mine the yellow embracing it, even when wind shaken

 

Yes, you were the tree and I were the seed

and our love the play of light

which guided our growth

and echoed our movements in those of each other

 

 

And yes, we created now and then destroyed again

 

But do clouds, too, not create and destroy with their rain?

Do flames, too, not create and destroy when it blows?

Do trees, too, not create and destroy in their growth?

 

Our creation and destruction reflects not how we were, now and then

but the potency of what we could have been, always

 

Yes, we created and destroyed

How many long for this power?

 

To rain down on the soil that cradles the child tree?

But then, out of the dew that forms, cast a thunder and burn it to ashes?

Only to allow it to rise out of its dying bed?

And, after all, guide its growth and support its movements with a play of light?

 

If you want love,

see destruction precede creation

If you do not want love,

see destruction succeed creation

 

For does love not settle in the fragile peace that follows war?

Does it not sail in spring after the blistering winter?

Does love not resonate in the final farewell?

 

Be the light in that dark of war

the warmth in that cold of night

the sound in that mournful silence

 

Be even as a cloud that sheds itself to form a river

as a tree that offers itself to the birds

as a flame that burns to stay alive

 

For destruction is the mother of creation

and, in this way, is creation

 

 

Knowing of this is the peace I found in your breath

And why my strong body and heart became refuges for your pain and thoughts

And why I watched the horizon burn quietly

Yes, this is the peace I found in your breath

 

 

And I think of this when the wind blows,

There at the garden where you laid me down