Monday, April 20, 2009

A poem for Eve Sedgwick...

by J J Cohen

... by my colleague Margaret Soltan. Her lines

The dying coral, the marl's clay,
The bones of the dead that named the place Bone Key --
Consider these at noon, when the passion flower is red.
Consider these at ten, by the gulf and the sea.

Consider where the cancer spread.

haunt me on a morning when I am about to read to ninety students a sweetly sad song of mortality and transformation:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

1 comment:

Matt said...

This is an extraordinary poem and a moving tribute to the now late Eve KS. The arc linking the new poem to one of my favorite segments in my favorite play leaves me breathless. Thank you so much.