The day I die love's blush will bloom,
a babe will breathe his first full breath,
a lark will trill his mating tune,
and so the world will mark my death.
When I was born, a funeral bell
in solemn sound rang out its knell
for someone I would never meet,
so now this round will be complete.
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Author Notes
The rispetto is an Italian form consisting of two quatrains in iambic tetrameter. The rhyme scheme is abab ccdd.
My mother died when I had just turned eight. Five days later my oldest sister gave birth to my first niece, and five days after that my other sister gave birth to my first nephew. I thus learned at a tender age that life and death play a dance as the cycle goes on and on. My world stopped for a moment when I lost my mother, but then it just kept on turning.
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