The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness

There's blood between us, love, my love,
There's father's blood, there's brother's blood;
And blood's a bar I cannot pass.
I choose the stairs that mount above,
Stair after golden sky-ward stair,
To city and to sea of glass.
My lily feet are soiled with mud,
With scarlet mud which tells a tale
Of hope that was, of guilt that was,
Of love that shall not yet avail.

The summer settled upon the House of Black unwillingly, like cotton on barbed wire, but, when caught, it piled hazily on until even the elf in the wine cellar sweated at his work. The paintings began to blister, before being wrapped up to noisy protest and stored in the cool attic, whilst the garden perspired to a yellow that never quite emulated the sun. In the sixth month of the year, beneath their tight-bound corsets, the women of the House of Black cast cooling spells that last mere minutes, before the dark cotton dampen from the clammy clasp of lethargy. The men wear robes even at the height of the sun, and either they neglect to complain, or else they know of some magic that even the women of the House of Black do not know of. The only man who dares to breach the strict dress code is barely a man, though the rough stubble on his chin might differ. He has worked in the gardens throughout the summer, tending the plants to the best of his knowledge, though never daring to venture into the potting shed, where a vicious ivy had taken root and conquered. Inside the soul of the gardener is a canker, and it is rotting through his young mind, less like blight on an apple than black, muddied water through silk. The mouldering stains can be removed, and perhaps one day it will be, but until then there will always be the dye of stagnant water on his soul.

In that glorious, endless summer, when the man-boy takes hold of his destiny and, in doing so, sets the course of the house on a road to decline and fall, there was a celebration held. It occurred on the longest day of the summer, and it celebrated a marriage that was more a marriage than those the Black family usually favoured, for, a half-century after they were joined in their vows, they still bore a mark of love between them, and the thread that tied them shined as strongly as it did when they first bound their wrists in concordance and blood. Their bond was gold on the tapestry, and now it was gold in age. To commemorate, the most ancient and noble House of Black called every wizard of pure and regal blood to a celebration of their marriage.

They have begun to arrive now. They come in through the house, greeted by the ghost of a departed butler. He is tolerated for his efficiency, and the House Elves submit to his orders when their masters are not around. Through the hall, where the paintings of the ancestors gaze down upon them, skin like ivory, hair as black as their name. Out to the conservatory, wrought in dark iron and glass. Then out into the garden, where a pure white marquee has been erected for the occasion. The garden goes onwards, but the tent does not require much space. Inside are long tables, covered in white and green. In the centre, the crest of the Blacks is embroidered, silver on green, like the banner of a tourney. Little groups chatter quietly, as if there was a nervousness of disturbing the peace. The string quartet has finished tuning their instruments, and they play chords of songs, seeking approval, before starting up a longer piece that sums up the heat of the summer.

Narcissa is standing in a corner of the marquee, with a Malfoy, Lucius, fiancé or boyfriend nobody knows. Maybe there will be an announcement; as one marriage is renewed, another begins, so picturesque. Regulus is talking to him in an undertone, the child who cannot be rid of. Lucius brushes him aside, hands him a little envelope with a robin-red seal. The charm is broken and they talk louder now. Lucius looks around and takes him by the shoulder, Narcissa still wrapped around the young man like a vine. They move further down the garden, away from the marquee.

Beneath the table are five little children. They have found a fairy and are pulling off its wings. Around them the House Elves hurry and dash, pattering across the broken earth with plates of salmon, beef, delicacies of watercress and cucumbers. The skin is peeled off to reveal their pure whiteness, though careful inspection will reveal the green still lingering. Sirius lounges against the elf door into the kitchens, looks around and waylays one as it scampers out. It carries a plate of chicken, veined with basil and sliced into infinite pieces. Sirius steals a few morsels and gobbles them down quickly, then nudges the house elf on its way. Nobody will notice. Nobody ever does. Sirius has never decided whether he likes this or not.

"Sirius, boy, stop looking at the guests like that. I thought you had some brains in your heads, by what your teachers say. If you won't socialise with the guests, go and help the house elves in the kitchen."

His mother notices everything. He doesn't count her amongst his "nobodies".

"Yes, mother." There is really no other response.

The kitchen is dominated by the oven, wrought in blackened iron, heated by a thousand spells of fire and warmth. The elves slam long ladders against it, running up to the very heights of the room where the meat roasts, then back down, sweltering, pulling pots off the hobs, levitating down new dishes, heating plates, turning puddings around in their resting places. Magic aside, they are more a machine than an oven crew. When Sirius enters, one or two scowl at him, others look happy enough when he pulls on an apron and starts chopping onions, carrots and cucumbers at once, his wand slashing repetitively. Within minutes there is a mound of vegetables piled high as an elf- one runs up and starts throwing the circles into a pot that levitates beside the worktop. Sirius stares out of the window, at the guests milling like dolls at a child's tea-party. Maybe he will prove his mother wrong. Maybe he will go out and socialise with the guests, fawn on the members of the Ministry, chatter idly to the society belles, become like his cousins and his brother; in short, everything he hates.

Still, he abandons his cutting and wanders back into the garden. His mother has barely moved, still talking amusedly to a squat, moustachioed man in quaintly ancient robes. She spots Sirius swiftly, not with a maternal eye for her brood but a mistress's watch for her servants.

"Have you finished, Sirius? What about your father? Where is he? Is he still getting his cravat tied? Tell one of the house elves to go and sort him out, you know he's never been able to do them properly. Besides, the Prophet will be here with a photographer any moment now. Go on, run and see!"

Sirius hurries off in doors. He doesn't dare visit his father. His mother tolerates him because she is his mother, and as such must set a certain standard. His father, however, is a different matter. When news came from school he was angry; anger turned to indifference, then to reconciliation, and returns to anger every few months. When his mood changes, he sends Howlers to Sirius that echo through his mind long into the night, and each has a little footnote of regret that does nothing to help Sirius understand. He has learnt to ignore them now, all of them, and every detail in them. He has to.

He doesn't have to see his father. The elves still follow his orders, though he suspects it's because they see him as a superior member of the house staff. He can ask one of them to go and visit his father, tie his cravat, make him ready for the renewal of the vows. It makes sense. Sirius knows that it does. He still mounts the stairs that lead to his parent's room, knocks on the door a single time.

Still light was poured on him, more light;
Angels, Archangels he outstripped,
Exultant in exceeding might,
And trod the skirts of Cherubim.
Still "Give me light," he shrieked; and dipped
His thirsty face, and drank a sea,
Athirst with thirst it could not slake.

"Father. It's me. Sirius." A pause. "Come in, then."

It is Sirius who pauses now. He places his hand on the doorknob, feels the engraved snake uncurl in his palm and bite deep, silver tongue flickering across the needle-pricked hand to taste the blood. This is the first time he has subscribed himself to the tests of blood that guard the highest sanctuary of the Blacks in the time since he abandoned them- evidently blood did not out when he did so. The first test is passed, and he steps through into the antechamber.

There is a rich, ancient smell, not musty like the stairway, but almost like soured wine washed over the room. The antechamber shines like the moon, inlaid with a thousand-and-one squares of mother-of-pearl, illuminated by a captured fairy that glimmers in a latticed iron lantern, electric blue like some exotic fish. The effect is lost on Sirius. He saw Kreacher drag long boxes of pearly tiles up the House Elf's staircases last summer- this, then, was where they went, laid out on the dregs of black gold, some tarry effluent that Sirius had found in the potting shed (this was before the vicious ivy took over). The substance had been kept in dark, silver-ringed drums, and had been labelled with dark runes. His mother had taken one look at them and called for Kreacher to take them to the store-room. Sirius knew they had gone- they kept his school supplies down there, and when he returned them there at Christmas, the barrels had disappeared, leaving no trace but a set of oily rings that, when Sirius attempted to clean them, dissolved the mop-head into bubbling, blistering froth. Sirius tries to avoid breathing in deeply, but there is a bitter taint in the air that burns his sinuses. He coughs, and breathes more of the air in. His throat itches. His eyes water. He looks down at his hands, and they move without his orders. The walls melt together in ripples of pearl, iridescent, oily rivers of ivory, sapphires, amethysts, all shining in the light of the imprisoned beast above him. Through the waterfall of his eyes, he sees a door open. Some dark material is beyond it. He reaches out with his arms for it, desperate to wipe away the tears. It rips, and the diaphanous shroud drops to the ground. Sirius looks up, and sees his father watching him.

"Stop crying, boy."

His father is wearing his suit already, and his cravat is neatly tied. There was no reason for him to come here, thinks Sirius, his chest tightening, his stomach vanishing.
"Mother told me to come here, father, to see how you were."

"I'm not senile, and she knows that perfectly well. No, she's sent you here for another reason, though I can't for the life of me work out why."

Reconciliation? The man-boy's heart lurches with distaste and hope. It is the same feeling he gets when he thinks about the Dark Arts. Every muscle is almost overwhelmed with desire to hurt, engrained in each and every line of his being like the lines on the face that mirrors each and every Black for generations untraceable. Yet the muscles are caught by a lactic acid of hatred of hatred, burning him with a purging fury. That is his curse; to rebel against his nature, because his nature demands that he does not strive beyond the base hatred that made and raised him.

Reconciliation? No, anything but, anything but that which would settle his brain and his muscles into the straitjacket of his house and his fathers, confining him to hatred. Despisal overcomes his senses, he spits, once, on the floor of his parent's room, stares at his father momentarily, scowls, and leaves. The veil does not catch around his feet, the pitch does not choke his lungs, the door does not resist as he abandons the room of his conception.

His father watches his son depart. His eyes show no surprise.

You looking earthward, what see you? Milk-white, wine-flushed among the vines,
Up and down leaping, to and fro,
Most glad, most full, made strong with wines,
Blooming as peaches pearled with dew,
Their golden windy hair afloat,
Love-music warbling in their throat,
Young men and women come and go.

Lucius and Narcissa are sitting by the Ivory Birch, which chatters nonsense through its gaping, fanged knotholes. They are kissing. Regulus and Bella take occasional glances at them, but otherwise appear deep in conversation, their eyes alight with the fervour of youth, one pair cobra-hooded, and the other bright blue like a glistening sea before the storm. Sirius sits below the great oak, just out of view, and begins to eat the stolen food, watching and waiting until he can move away without them seeing him in turn. Bella is growing more animated, ebullient, her ashen eyes offset by their swarthy lids. As she does, Regulus shies from her, a nervous chuckle replacing his earlier, strident tones. Occasionally he makes a comment and she smiles and his confidence grows, but it's beaten back down as she seizes upon them like a dog worrying a favourite toy, shaking and pawing it into a battered, shredded mess. Sirius knows the look on Regulus' face; Peter wears it when they're planning the next torment of Severus. Is Sirius really no better than his cousin? Is he worse, in fact, for surely words and arguments are worth so much less than Severus? That runs contrary to everything he has taught himself, and he brushes it aside with a little snort of amusement.

They hear him. Narcissa breaks away from Lucius, to a little pout of dismay, whilst Bella has her wand out immediately. Regulus is slow to realise there is a danger and turns last, his hand never even ventures near his wand.

"Oh, it's you, Siri," says Narcissa, with a look of relief. For a moment Sirius feels like a child again, part of the conspiracy, camps in the garden and refusals to come in from the darkness when their parents called. Then he remembers that he put his childhood away long ago, and that her trust in him is no more than simple trust in a mute. He stands still, staring at her. He feels like a mute now, and he will not turn aside his eyes, and he doesn't want to put away his childish things. Not now, in the garden of his youth.

"Siri, you know it's rude to stare. What's wrong with you? This is a private conversation!"

Narcissa's shrill voice breaks him out of his reverie. She is breathing heavily. Sirius thinks to himself that it doesn't look like any kind of conversation, but he doesn't comment. He just wants to stay a while, here where all the troubles of his life seem guarded by the walls of the garden, even though the danger and the strife is standing impatiently in front of him.

"Sirius? Stop staring. Listen to me!"

"Come now, Narcissa. The poor boy can't help it. There's always a trace of bad blood in the old families- look at the Weasleys if you want proof. No, bad blood will out, and the best we can do is clear the mess up afterwards."

Regulus smirks at this. He knows his blood runs strong and true.

"Oh, you're probably right, Lucius." She sighs a little, and her lips press together in a bemused annoyance. "At least you're not a Squib or something equally as bad, Siri. Look, take the glasses back up to the house. The house elves can't do everything themselves, and auntie's probably frantic with worry."

The boy-man turns to leave, quickly, before the black blood in his heart pumps fiercely to his mind. Action has been his release from the family, but it has also been the source of his worries. Never think, only do. The epitome of his home, the bane of his house. At night, sometimes, he changes, just so that he can remember the thrill of those single nights each month, his strongest, happiest memories of the House he can truly call Home.

In the hopelessness of his plight, he slumps against the rust-red wall, curls up, and changes. There is an instant when he is not dog and not man, but it does not last for any significant time- within a minds moment, he is himself as he sees himself in his mind's eye. A hound of stature, perhaps imbued with a wild nobility through mere size alone, though, he and his companions prefer to think, through their actions and their motives, kings of the forest, princes of their House. Each hair sways with a restless activity that cannot be tamed, yet they never seem to move out of place. When they shift, they lock into new, sleek patterns, different every time, yet perfectly aligned. The man-boy is now man-dog, his form giving him the confidence that only recognition of his illustrious place in the eyes of his compatriots can do. He is planner, joker, marauder of each and every secret that can be divined in the castle. He is clever, handsome, talented. He is popular. He is everything that would make him the darling of the family, but for one thing- that he has turned his back on their reputation, scorned their power, spurned their traditions, and denied himself the powers and privileges of the firstborn son to a powerful and privileged home. It is the last that is unforgivable, because it is not that he has not ambition, but that he will not fulfil those ambitions by the multitude of means open for him, but through his talents and his wits alone.

The sounds of conversation and chewing is broken by footsteps, close by- it is too late to change, too late to become a man. He stares at the intruder, and growls, almost subconsciously, and shifts quickly to his paws. Lying down, he was a brooding mound of shady pelts. Standing, he becomes a reborn Cerberus, towering guardian of the personal Hades of the man before him.

The time is short and yet you stay:
Today, while it is called today,
Kneel, wrestle, knock, do violence, pray;
Today is short, tomorrow night:
Why will you die? why will you die?

The man stands there, unwilling to move. An uncle, maybe, or merely a family guest. In the depths of the garden, where the red brick wall blocks out the sunlight, only the eyes of the great hound glimmer. The champagne glass drops to the ground and, in the mere second that it does, Sirius can hear a rushing wind, when he knows perfectly well that the air has been still all of the summer. It shatters. The man chokes, turns, and, desperately trying not to look back, flees back to the marquee.

The man-dog gazes at the retreating figure with a look of astonishment. Until now, only other beasts had seen him- horned beasts, fanged beasts, beasts with tails like smoothworms. He has no idea of the effect he would have on the vulnerable and superstitious. The man-boy changes and runs after the person who has seen him, who can reveal his secret, and who is lying, choking, grasping for the door of the marquee. He gives a long, drawn out gasp of "Grim". There is a sudden silence, and a chill wind that lifts the heat of the sun cruelly whispers through the garden. Every guest looks at the fallen man, then up at Sirius.

His mother takes control; she always has done. Already she has people looking after the man, checking his pulsing veins, healing spells at the ready, a distant cousin has already run to the storerooms for ingredients for a soothing salve. She sees her son in the corner of her vision, and beckons him over.

"Sirius. Don't stand there gawping, we have guests who need attending to. Mr Fudge over there, you might take lessons from his nephew, you know, that boy is going somewhere. Real ambition, that one. Go and get them a glass of champagne each, quickly. And make sure that Kreacher's informed St Mungo's."

The man-boy nods to his mother and goes quickly into the house. He can look up to a man like Mr Fudge. He is, after all, a man of honour, Order of Merlin, master of prophecies. His nephew is to follow, perhaps, in his footsteps. Or maybe the Ministry beckons; either way, they are men of ambition, and men of good breed. That, to the House of Black, is all that will ever count. Anything besides that is merely pragmatism; an alliance there, a hoarding of wealth here, and the ever strengthening of the floodgates to head off the encroaching tides of dirtied water.

Pragmatism. Sirius has never been one for pragmatics. The semantics of the world are his interest, bracketing these people here, their little tastes and peccadilloes, their families and friends, and how he can use these. The links stay with him, and he judges by them no matter how he tries to break free. Sometimes, when he's particularly low in his humours, he wonders why he even tries to break the bonds of the family. Is it just a rebellion that started one day in a far-off autumn? He knows it's perfectly within his grasp to turn back, and resist the chains no more, settle back into the shadowed hearth of the dynasty and rest. There is a suspicion, though, that the Blacks would not welcome this. He has turned rebellion into his life, and to go back on it would be cowardice of a nature that neither his home not his house would greet kindly.

Sirius shakes the thoughts aside. He dwelt upon them for a year before he finally broke free, action begetting freedom, freedom begetting action. To stay still even for a moment is to let himself be dragged back by the ever-tightening chains. Perhaps one day he can rest, far away from here. Peter sends postcards of far-off tropics that arrive by exotic birds, and Sirius likes to imagine that one day he might visit there.

You linger, yet the time is short:
Flee for your life, gird up your strength
To flee; the shadows stretched at length
Show that day wanes, that night draws nigh;
Flee to the mountain, tarry not.

"Sirius."

Narcissa stands on the threshold behind him. He turns and looks, her slender figure silhouetted against the light of day.

"Narcissa. Why are you following me?"

"I'm not following you. I'm simply waiting."

Sirius knows where this is leading. They played this game as children, stalking each other round the garden. Bella had always been best at it, a stalker in the weeds and the bushes, but Narcissa would keep on at it long after Bellatrix had grown bored.
Narcissa and Bella would visit their aunt and uncle and cousins often when they were young, and they had another game that they would play with Sirius. They would creep up to the attic, quiet as possible so as not to alert their parents, and they make a child's mockery of the old witch hunts under which an entire generation of Blacks were almost lost. First they would take Bella's copy of the Book, and in wax would scrawl a cross upon the bindings, as they had heard was born by those who first attacked the Blacks. Then they would tie Sirius to the chair, with cords torn from the cloth covers of paintings and furniture stacked high into the air. Sirius was the youngest and thus always the victim. First they would bind his arms behind him, and mutter old Latin phrases that they had heard their mothers and fathers say in spells. Perhaps they had a notion that the first tormentors spoke Latin, or perhaps they simply hoped the speech of adults would banish frivolity, for they took their childish rites seriously.

When the arms of the victim were bound, they would take a deep bowl from under a velvet cloth, and fill it with water from a pitcher that never gave out. Then they would force the head of their victim into the bowl. The first time they played the game, they tried telling them to repent or be burned, but in the still of the attic it sounded ridiculous, hollow, and after that they remained silent. When the last few pockets of air gave out from the lungs of the victim, they would pull them away from the bowl and lay them out, gasping on the floor of the attic.

Then they would lift Sirius up, pulling the shirt from his back, and with it they would bind his ankles to the legs of a chair, like a cripple king on some ignoble throne. His back bared, they would drive nails from the boards in the floor and run them up and down the child's spine. At first, the iron would feel cold and rough, but after a while it would warm with his flesh, tracing vagaries as the numbness spread upwards, from ankle to thigh to the back of the neck. Sometimes Bella would bring a candle up from the house, and they would light it and melt it across his body in a cross, each point of a stigmata bound to each other, traced in white across the young boy's skin. As it tightened, the heat would enter his body, and he would try not to giggle as it did.

After a while they would tire of their game and leave Sirius alone in the dark. The boy was active, wild, and he did not take calmly to the end of the game. He kept on with it even when he knew what was coming, because to give it up would be to let the bondage of his body spread to bondage of his mind. Illuminated only by the shafts of sunlight through the cracks of the tiles above, he would sit and strive against the cords that transfixed him to the chair. He could hear the sniggering of the ancient paintings through their coverings, and he would try to block his mind to them, brave as the child could be. What kind of Black are you, to be tied up and bound so willingly? What do you hope to achieve? It's always about the achievements, for the paintings in the attic. So high in the house, and so covered by the dark. Later, the girls would come back and untie him.

You sinned with me a pleasant sin:
Repent with me, for I repent.
Woe's me the lore I must unlearn!
Woe's me the easy way we went,
So rugged when I would return!
How long until my sleep begin,
How long shall stretch these nights and days?
Surely, clean Angels cry, she prays;
She laves her soul with tedious tears:
How long must stretch these years and years?

Now all the memories return to Sirius. In a way, they'd never left him, no matter how he tried to forget. Each summer he would look to the attic as if for guidance, but none would ever come. The paintings had abandoned him as they had done in the past. He wasn't sure whether he had abandoned them first. It doesn't matter. Not any more.

The boy-man runs up the stairs away from his cousin. Some of the paintings smirk at him, others tut-tut at him disapprovingly. He isn't quite sure why he runs for the attic. Is the man-boy scared? Does he run to safety? Obviously not- the attic is the last place he would run to, isn't it? Shouldn't it be? Musn't it be? So it is his room that he runs to, then, surely, for there he can bolt the door and hide from his cousin, who knew him so well in their youth. If that is so, why does Sirius keep running up the stairs, past the landing on which his bedroom exists? Is he panicking? The boy-man has faced worse dangers than these. Yet those dangers were those he willingly put himself into, weren't they, orchestrated when the night is at its darkest, and operated when the night is brightest. This is daytime, no matter how the shadowy interior of the house suggests otherwise, and in daylight plans seem silly and juvenile, like toy Aurors in a sandbox, pushed around by senile generals and politicians with minds on their next meal. This is a danger that cannot be planned for, cannot be evaded, and must be faced up to.

"I heard about what you did to my uncle. A small victory for a little rebel, Sirius."

"Shut up, Narcissa. I don't care if they throw me out now; I've had enough of this place."

The black eyes look evasive, not quite vulnerable, but they do not glint with daring as they do at Hogwarts. He has a plan, but it's a little boy's plan, run away to join his friend, camp in the bottom of the garden, get a job, become a man.

"Auntie won't throw you out for just spiting her. You've put them through so much pain that a little more won't make a difference. Besides, you know too much about Lucius and Reggie. You're as bound to the house as Kreacher, you know, but if you won't be bound willingly I'll have to do it by force."

The attic is cold as ever, and there's a rustle in the paintings. A sigh of anticipation, perhaps, or maybe it's merely a Doxy, in which case Kreacher must be called for soon. Not now, though, for the woman is about to strike her cousin down, (they call them kissing cousins in this part of England), and that will put an end to his fantasies.

"I don't know anything about Lucius, I don't know about Reggie. You think I'm privy to the secrets of the House? I'm a nobody, a Gryffindor, I'm little more than the bloody gardener."

"If you didn't know, you know now. Maybe not the specifics, but you know they are hiding something."

"No I don't! I don't care!"

Yet already he's putting bits and pieces together in his mind, trying to work out the links between them.

Sirius used to sit on the hallway stairs in his childhood, watching the guests and working out where they fitted in on the tapestry. When he left for Hogwarts, he was given a book with blank pages that could not be written upon, but were said to hold the secrets of the world. In the front pages was an intricate tree, leaved with the names of his ancestors. At Hogwarts, as at home, Sirius would sit on the moving stairs and watch the students and the teachers, the book on his lap, and trace with his finger the branches, twigs and ivy that linked him to each student.

After a while, he took up with another Pureblood, a Potter, who had already befriended another lonely little boy, from a feeling of duty, perhaps, or maybe merely because he needed a follower. They were now a trio of the brave, Pettigrew stumbling behind them. After a while another lonely boy joined them, whose hair was flecked with grey and who paled in the light of the moon. Sirius no longer needed to watch the tree that nestled the House of Black. Beyond that tree was a forest, and it sheltered men and women who would be removed by force from the tapestry and from the book.

Sirius has always traced the lines between the crowds. What joins Reggie and Lucius, though, he isn't quite sure. What's between them? There are no shared acquaintances, no shared interests. It is not surprising that Sirius cannot see the bond that ties them. In the House of Black, the creed of the supremacy of the pure is so engrained into the very fibres of the family that he can no longer see the ebony-pure ties that bond each member to each other. The Blacks are dark moths in a grimy factory of loathing.

"No, little cousin," though Sirius is no longer the young child he was when his cousin first bound him here, "I know exactly what you're thinking. Don't tell me those muddied companions of yours haven't told you about what's coming."

"What's coming, Narcissa? I told you I don't know anything."

"Then you shall remain here until you say that you do."

She binds him once more, but this is five years after the last. No longer are the cords torn from the covers of their predecessors, no longer is there wax that tightens or water that drowns. It is no longer a game, and childish foreplay is neither needed nor desired. Now, the cords are as translucent as the skins of their ancestors, and the attic is as dark as their tresses. The light in her wand goes out, and Sirius can hear footsteps as she moves away to the hatch. A glow of light as she opens it, then once more darkness, and he is left in the trickle of a filtered sun.

If now you saw me you would say:
Where is the face I used to love?
And I would answer: Gone before;
It tarries veiled in Paradise
When once the morning star shall rise,
When earth with shadow flees away
And we stand safe within the door,
Then you shall lift the veil thereof.
Look up, rise up: for far above
Our palms are grown, our place is set;
There we shall meet as once we met,
And love with old familiar love.