UNINHABITED FACE

UNINHABITED FACE for FMH February 1990

Uninhabited face.

Uninhabited.

I look at your dead face, the face of the dead.

Curious.

It is not unlived in like a newborn infant

Not untouched like a child

 

 – but abandoned.

Gone away – passed on - departed.

The old euphemisms applied do not explain

do not enlighten the curious absence

of the person – now dead.

The familiar, loved -

and sometimes hated face, known so well,

is not vacant like a room or

like a house empty for renting.

Known too well

so that looking was redundant -unnecessary.

That face is now changed - but with what subtlety.

Uninhabited

and therefore curiously useless

– not even as an empty paper bag

is purposeless - and not you.

Not the one,

not the lost one gone.

Now also uninhabiting.

Part of nothing, nowhere,

unjoined by death.

No flutter in the air.

No sigh left.

Nothing.

Like a torn page from which the writing has faded

there is no meaning to this worn and empty housing

for the soul we could not catch,

could not prevent departing -

it is simply –

uninhabited.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 1990 Harare