Kaleidoscope III 
Seven Last Words
“as if I were drinking my own tears
from the cupped palms of a stranger’s hands”
Anna Akhmatova, 1945
First Words
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do:
Those days you were ridiculed in the street,
spat at, belittled: your long retreat, the cave
of your being lit by setting sun, star, moon,
planet, that last glimmer of compassion,
dear friend, as your dying body shuts down
and all your dreamings break, a tidal wave
upon the shores of time. I rise to greet
each morning through the mercy of your death,
your words a balm to calm the fractious heart.
I could not save you. I could not even try.
And where forgiveness is cold abstraction,
you teach us how to live, you teach us how to die:
as tyrannies crumble, as empires fall apart,
to walk through ignorance, breath by hard won breath.
Second Words
Today you will be with me in Paradise:
And will my dogs be there? My horse? My gang?
Will Black Rose be there? The one I have loved
beyond reason? My mother? My young son?
There will be angels. There will be asphodels.
And will I walk the gardens wet with rain?
And will you heal me? Stem the flow of my blood?
All my life, borders closed; doors slammed; gates banged
shut. My papers were never the right ones.
Will there be mountains, rivers without end?
Will there be a narrow road to the deep north?
There will be angels. There will be asphodels.
On bright May mornings can I sally forth
without care of what lies round the next bend?
Will there be harps? Singing? Will there be tunes?
Third Words
Woman behold your son; son behold your mother
All living beings be kin, kindred, kind;
whether by birthright or by species bound
or through the pity of our most human loss.
We, who live the grief of the broken mother
whose only child is dying on the cross,
who have stood silent before the open wound,
we hold such coal black sorrow in our mind
it becomes diamond – the press of anger’s weight —
that cuts right through what others us, and thus
makes of to sister or to brother new verbs
to honour all tortured creatures, to shelter
and soothe their pain with healing balms and herbs.
We cry freedom is all of us or none of us,
beneath the shining stars, mirrors to our fate.
Fourth Words
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
I worshipped you and then you left me cold,
desolate, furious, in those frozen wastes.
I lost my hope. I had no map to chart a way
out of the darkness. Abandoned, distraught,
I didn’t think I’d live to see the break of day,
denied for all time your voice, your touch, your taste.
I turned to face the loneliness, I grew old,
a white-haired woman on a field of snow,
prostrate before the ancient gods who came
in dreams with news of planets, comets, stars.
Their signs come streaming in a fierce onslaught
of images to wake me — healed and scarred,
though god-forsaken. By pomegranate framed —
hornèd moon, queen of heaven, starry robes.
Fifth Words
I thirst
There is nothing in the wild world to quench
this thirst: not the percussive beat of rain
on the green and pockmarked face of the lake;
not a draught of the mountain’s pure headwaters.
Not even the river’s meander can slake
it, nor offer any solace for such pain —
this desire, this craving, that threatens to wrench
my aging body from my darkling soul.
I walk the margins of this jet-black tarn
and divine the angles of stars. They move
in solemn constellation in the water’s mirror.
If I rightly read the pattern that they weave,
the threads of fate spun from luminous yarn,
they promise peace, devotion, the world made whole.
Sixth Words
It is finished
Consider the final mercy of death:
it draws the curtains on a suffered life,
it steals on quiet feet into the ward,
it strikes the stage set, it folds the scene away.
It comes with sharpened knife to cut the cord,
to free the earthbound mortal from earthly strife.
To watch the dying is to watch them birth
their own death. Whether under a bodhi tree,
an enlightened one in a state of bliss,
or on cedar, cypress, olive, or on pine
they be hung and crucified some dark Friday
their final comfort, sweet hyssop, sour wine,
they merge into the blazing light of myth,
dead stars still shining in the cosmic sea.
Seventh Words
Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit
Like a refugee I come to your door.
I, who carry nothing, who abject stand
bereft, beyond hopelessness, beyond hope,
surrender to the company of strangers,
lost souls who found it hard in life to cope
with grief, the devastation of their lands,
their children displaced and murdered in our wars.
Do not ask what our span in time was worth!
Do not blame us for the crimes of States!
Casting off winding cloth, body bag, shroud,
we left the belovèd world, all her wonders,
released from flesh to flow like water, drift like clouds,
to flock with wounded angels at your gate,
we who trod so lightly on this holy earth.
Paula Meehan, Thursday 15th of May, 2025, Therma, Ikaria.
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Kaleidoscope III