The Soft Redemption of the Soul

by the fact of being human,
we suffer.
by the fact of life,
not everything is grand. 

less a man than an idea
lost on the dreaming sea,
I wait and wonder
in general and specific. 

Life and life,
death and death,
love and love,
loss and loss. 

how could the fate
of real ideals
be anything else besides
venality and self possession,
all of crashing down
like a broken flood?

main characters, you and I,
we lose; we lose ourselves,
we lose life and love.
I've lost love and life. 

she was a poet and a dancer. 

we even lose death,
because it does not belong to us;
our deaths belong to those we leave behind. 

at the most fundamental level,
the redemption of the soul is soft,
no grand climax or lesson with a hug:
it's just get good or die.