# Memorial Ballade for West

Author: Rob MacWolf
Tags: PetDeath, ballade, epitaph, lyric, memorial, poetry

West  
2011-2025  
May you find Rest From Grieving.  
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The bruise under my fingernail remains  
Now two months and a half, since you are gone.  
You grazed me, panicking beneath your pains,  
With fangs I’d forced your medicine beyond.  
I heal, it seems. It seems I must live on.  
How long until I can no longer see  
The closest thing to blood you’ve ever drawn?  
The only injury you left on me?

 

Time will erase the loftiest of men  
To vast and trunkless legs of stone. Still more  
Will they erase your monuments, my friend:  
The urn, the fur, the leash hung on the door.  
My fingertip’s no longer even sore.  
Would I could bear this wound perpetually—  
As stained glass martyrs bleed forevermore—  
The only injury you left on me.

 

But no. There are more wounds than this. Why else  
In writing this would I be such a mess?  
Each memory, of voice or paws or pelt,  
Each aches, because it’s something you have left.  
If any favors I am owed from Death?  
May all of you, carved on my memory,  
Heal not at all as long as I draw breath  
And be the injury you left on me.

 

My precious pup, think not upon my claws  
But bruised. I’ll heal before you next see me.  
Beside you I’ll be fine. Your absence was  
The only injury you left on me.

Source: https://sofurry.com/s/nrXAyrre