I know, there’s no death. The soul that dwells above

Sits by God’s side and is enshrined by love

The likes of which, in its terrestrial mold,

It never knew or fancied to behold.

The body festers under weight of dirt,

From dust to dust transitioning is short.

How can we ever our hearts command

To stop the weeping when we mourn the One?

A piece of flesh was ripped from heart in vain

To make it suffer even greater pain.

You, you alone could cure bleeding sore,

Alas, you’re gone, departed, you’re no more.

But wait, there’s no death, my poet, you will live,

Your soul is fee from agony and grief,

But still I weep for him who fled from pain,

It’ll be awhile before we meet again.

Tomorrow has arrived, it’s here to stay

The one you wrote your verse for yesterday.

Oh, poet, did you know that “tomorrow” will

Last for eternity and cause more tears to spill?

You used to bitterly your solitude deplore

Regretting no one to knock at your front door.

Yet, in my dreams, I worked my knuckles sore

When desperately knocking at that door.

Behind that door, in broken mirror’s shards

Your heart was screaming, being torn apart.

I heard your footsteps slowly approach,

And poet’s hand the copper knob would touch.

I stared intensely at the polished wood…

The door was opened and there the poet stood:

His hair touched by gray of years before

His posture burdened by the weight of lore.

My dear Poet, please wipe away the tears,

Of one who came to know hate in early years.

My love for you I’m coming to declare

That’s born of poet’s words filled with despair.

The words my heart can fully understand

As if I wrote them by own hand.

I later learned that poet’s own torment

Gave birth to words that I have come to covet.

The heart that learns of hate in early years

Can’t help but ache and shed unending tears.

My heart, held captive by your words for evermore,

Weeps over them, its own pain galore.

From distant lands, from valleys of the East

I sent my love to you through ocean’s mist.

But walls of home where solitude once reigned

Stood firm and wouldn’t let it penetrate.

My Poet, once you said you never felt

God’s hand in chapel on your shoulder laid.

Instead, Lord laid a stone on your poor heart

To make sure it’ll be hard with words to part.

So those words that burdened heart escaped

Broke other hearts and peoples’ feelings shape.

The only price for man’s eternal life

Is bitter pain and never-ending strife.

The kind of pain that burns like fire inside

And burns one up with nothing left behind.           

That’s why you hurt as if the Earth’s distress

In its entirety on poet’s shoulders rests.

The poet of sad words, you gave your hand,

And on my knees you let me humbly stand.

The very hand that wrote undying verses

That broke my heart in tiny bleeding pieces.

And then my lips touched poet’s hand

Like icon in a church…

Georg  Mateos, now that you soar with angels up above,

You know that for you He saved His greatest love!

You’ve earned your greatness, now know the truth:

You are immortal in Heaven and on Earth.

By Liana Margiva