Ashes to Ashes -------------------------------------------
How can you close your eyes to rest?
How can you make our mother cry?
Has a demon stolen from your chest
and left you heartless where you lie,
or did he ask and you comply?
Did he sway you with greed or lust?
Did you resist or even try?
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Don't you know you'll miss the best?
You're passing all your chances by.
There is love to be professed
and handsome boys to send awry.
You've cakes to eat and dresses to buy.
You've yet to lose and give your trust
and yet you leave, I wonder why.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
I must admit, I am impressed
for you can safely now defy
the pain and hurt of those distressed;
you'll never have tears to dry,
nor age to mar your lovely eyes
Are you leaving me to rot and rust,
while in perfect youth you rise and fly?
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
I ask and ache for a reply
but cold lips hold none and so I must
kiss my dead and say 'goodbye.'
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
this is very well constructed, and very intense. I could feel what you were writing. I really have no critique for this besides the fact that i'm impressed
A difficult sublect to write about.....even more so in the form you chose. I think you held it together very well, and the form is all through the poem, without cliché, or being forced.
I read that the ballade is more difficult for English than for French poets, and when I read what structure and rhyme scheme was required, I was amazed that anyone could compose a lucid poem with it! I think you have done that nicely; this verse form would give me a headache I believe if I even tried it.
How to move on after mortal loss has been and is one of the great philosophical challenges to the mind and soul. We that live must go on among the living, and cannot cling to what has passed, however great or little our sentiments! We can give our tears, we can smear our faces with ashes, but we cannot go where they have gone.