Clara and Robert Schumann

What have I felt when ... he (a man who wept so long for Schubert's death)
can find no sense or breath to wrest my sense in song?

How long, long it seems ... confined,
unable to confide or hide the anguish of his pitiable state:
or even mate that poor life with death.

And at the end ... not knowing wife, child or friend.
So spend the moment, age, confused as to the page, chapter, book of memory
'till words and symbols seem just this ...

One little kiss: to touch, to hold ...

Oh will she yet mind the mould of my decaying flesh
caress and cleanse that corrupted mesh of fragmented thought
until the ravages within this skull mean naught?