Sorrow

Amy Winehouse

All song is formal, and you
Maybe felt this and decided
You’ d be formal too. (The eyeliner, the beehive: formal.)

How will it taste — the beer the gravedigger
will drink after bestowing your dirt coat?
What will he say — you keeled the outrigger
too south, & when the breakers rolled, no boats
heard your Mayday? & will he ask his friends
at the bar — if someone calls a Mayday
& there is no one at the other end
of any radio, did Kevin A.
González really exist? O second
person, what would you do without you? Where
would Kevin A. González hide? Our bond
is over. The red of the rockets’ glare

I
It was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough —
Light in their loving as soldiers can be —
First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them
Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea! . . .

II

— Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly
Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,
They stepping steadily — only too readily! —
Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.

III

While the far farewell music thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine —
All smalling slowly to the gray sea line —
And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,

Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands,
And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,
And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,

Vaster battalions press for further strands,
To argue in the self-same bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend. — Now deckward tramp the bands,

Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea
Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,