Poetry

Your Farewell


by Jerry Zhao (M27)
Summer 2023 Issue


I had not realized that you had died.
Because your voice still rings out
and I still see your lovely pout,
something that I've since been denied.

I wonder how your journey was,
past the River Styx1 filled with dreams
and all those cracks in the seams.
Did you find, amidst the chaos, a cause?

I cannot bear the thought
that your soul, adrift upon our requiem,
would be anywhere but in Elysium2,
the Paradiso3 that I long sought.

I hope you have not yet
drank from the River Lethe4.
And, I ask, would you prithee
not forsake the life we had?

I know I will soon join you,
for your passing was a half-death,
a state so torturous, every breath
scattered like the morning dew.

This, I beg of you, my dove.
Please await my eternal slumber.
I shall set the world asunder,
a final elegy to end our love.

The first of the five rivers of the Greek Underworld, one that all souls must cross.
The resting place of heroes and the virtuous in Greek mythology.
Paradise according to Dante’s Divine Comedy.

4 The second river of the Greek Underworld, where anyone who touches it loses their memory of their mortal life.