"All who have travelled this perishing life..."

All who have travelled this perishing life,

Let us gather and wait for our healing.

But time is no healer,

And time too will die in the vanishing stars.

Great Rembrandt, the master of light and of shadow,

Of tortuous path, ambiguity,

Come paint our faces,

The dazed lakes of eyes wishing for some

Other life, jowls full with unfinished living,

And brows soft with unceasing hope —

Come paint our faces, the cradles

Of sun through white shutters,

The graveyards of dark afternoons,

Stirrings of tea in a lifetime of mornings,

The touch of the lips kissing skin —

Yes we remember —

The plantings of seed pods that may never bloom,

Visits of uncles, the births of our children:

We've witnessed it all, without knowing why.

Come paint our faces,

The lights and the shadows,

The ends and beginnings,

All lost in the sea of uncertainties.

~ Alan Lightman, from Song of Two Worlds

*Two African Men, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1661. Read observations about this painting here, here, and here.