Does the willow keep on waiting to take you beneath its shade?
Did the forest that you ran through, and the sweet immortal glade,
And the lake that lives forever, once consider otherwise?
Do they still await your laughter? Do they know you will not rise?

Does their stillness show they're empty? Have they not the strength to burn?
Or have they already forgotten? Do the wheels of time so turn
So that one man only matters to the men who matter less?
No, the world cannot stop turning because one man is at rest.

Though I have not forgotten you, the universe can't care.
The sky has better things to do; the sparkling summer air
That once held you like a mother, took you underneath its wing
Won't remember you tomorrow. Still, the children softly sing.

Still the willow knows young fingers in its branches, not the name.
And the forest, hearing laughter, cannot know it's not the same.
Still new feet will dip into the lake, as millions have before.
And it matters not, if someone sits, who sits along the shore.

You're immortal only in the sorrows of my churning mind.
And when I die, the world we knew will leave us both behind.
Yet your voice, your laugh, your whirling eyes, won't perish with the years,
For there's nothing so immortal as the universal tears.