Death Is the Frame of Love

Death is the frame of love,
our skeletons the groundwork of our play;
and however we move,
the bones move in us that outlast the clay.

Yet bone is a firm ground
to build the highest act of love upon:
if love by death is bound,
it is by limbs in virtue of their bone.

In skull, blade, groin, hip, knee,
we grasp the form that will outlast the eye:
without these dead things we
should not be we to know each other by.

Bone as the frame of love
outlasts the picture. What joy can be there?
Dust the loved self must prove;
but bone framed joy from love’s mere flesh and air.