Why tears when they themselves have courage now
to abdicate from life as soon they must?
Aware of time’s inexorable plough
they put their lifetimes wisdom in my trust.
They pass me on the living sword of knowledge
to cut the thorns surrounding slumbering good
and in the uproar of the world, this college,
they taught me studies where the evils stood.
They need no will to sign me their successor.
Can a vision be left in black and white?
I read no lists of sin as their confessor
for what has sin with vision’s blinding light?
These were their heirlooms handed on to me
as guardian for man oblivious,
these were all their valuable property
which those who value money would not miss.
I will not mourn their death with sorrowmaking
the coward’s grief of leaving and of taking,
occasion not for tears in lifting up,
before a shattering, their glistening cup.
Source: “Human, My Race” by Amy McGrath
