The Album - Bill Manhire, New Zealand Poet

Window Series, Amsterdam, originally uploaded by - di.

What can you gain from my name?
It will die - like the sad scrawl
of a wave on a far-off shore,
like night as it sighs in the woods.

On the pale, remembering page
there'll be only a trace,
marks on a headstone
in some strange, untranslatable tongue.

For what can remain? Lost
in the years and the tempests of feeling,
my name cannot last in your life
like some delicate keepsake.

Yet on a day of despair, in a small space
of calm, say it aloud out of your sadness; say
'somewhere I may still be remembered;
there's a heart in the world, where I live'.