MEMENTO MORI (sequence)
Service
The last time I stood
in this amphitheatre / with
the people ranged around us
the sun beating down,
you stood before me.
To each word I recited
you responded in kind / and I
in my turn and we / kissed
at some length and
joined together then / in the general
conversation as it
walked along the riverbank.
Your smile is still there
in the video.
The last time I stood
in that amphitheatre / with
the people ranged around me
the sun limply through the trees;
alone.
My words rang out / there was
no reply / the carefully chosen music
was faint and tinny / you were
behind me in a frame / smiling still.
I walked along the riverbank / clutching
a cornflower /I’ve been told there is a video:
you aren’t in it.
Blue cornflowers float
mindlessly, congregating
like the mourners / the ducks
swim among them / at a loss
like the mourners.
A hand falls on my shoulder
another another there are
too many hands and as
I walk away the general conversation
starts up again without us / it is
in full swing when I return.
I walk through not catching its eye it has
a lot to say about you / that it only met you
a few times / or once / but you were this
or you seemed that what are you doing on the weekend
do you need a lift it just isn’t fair so young I’m going overseas in May
and my job is giving me the shits
oh Pete we’re so sorry.
Melancholy Flower (Life is but a)
A man lost his mother in the middle
of the Depression and his wife
in the middle
of the swinging sixties:
a boy lost his mother in the middle
of the swinging sixties
and his wife in the middle
of a depression.
The fearful symmetry is
all out of kilter / there is nothing
to admire / nothing to fear / nothing
in the forests of the night
except: a fading ember / a striped
carcass / a hand cold and stiff
and an eye fixed and staring.
A man finds his wife still and restless on the floor
at lunchtime: in 1967:
the lunch goes cold in the oven.
A man finds his wife (who was born
in 1967) just as cold on the floor
at breakfast time: in 1999.
The breakfast goes unmade / the son
and the daughter are all
unawares / one at school / one in her cot.
Is this man’s father / is this man’s son? /is
this a riddle? / or my life?
father husband wife
The sphinx is eating my heart first
as an appetiser
If there’s anything we can do to help or if you need to talk about anything
don’t hesitate to call: (we have social workers available),
the nurse from the coroner’s office says.
She is all soft English estuarine
understanding she tells me that
she has the “results”: having insulted your memory at their leisure
they have discovered after eight weeks that
your heart was too big and may
have killed you : thankyou Nicole for ringing
but I could have told you that eight weeks ago why didn’t
you just ask me?
Nicole says apologetically that
they have discovered having covered every angle
that there were amphetamines
in your system, and that you had also taken
legally prescribed drug a and legally prescribed drugs c d and e
but within the therapeutic range / she has no idea
what you were doing taking speed and has the good grace not to ask me
being all soft English estuarine understanding
she tactfully skirts around the idea
because of course she doesn’t really have a clue
that you were in a hurry to get away from us or
from somebody or something or that you ran
your spirit to a standstill or that if I were to wax
then you had to wane / and I respecting her position
just say say mmm and thankyou and even
because I am English too
I understand
Daughter
what does she know?
how is she doing?
what did she do?
She looked at you
with that smile / she has
a new smile now / an older
wiser smile / she reached
for your breast where your mother
smile lay / at her command
you and she swam at bathtime softly
while I stood usefully / patient
at your behest cradling a white towel
warm from the radiator / in my hand
what does she know now?
how is she doing now?
what shall we do now?
she looks at me
unquestioningly / she
does not expect an answer.
Last rites
No one is in black / everyone
drifts around slightly bowed beneath
the weight of their everyday clothes
all cheek by jowl in each cluttered room.
The porch is cluttered with flowers
the bedroom is cluttered with your clothes
the kitchen is cluttered with
the food they keep bringing
the garden is cluttered with
fag ends from the wake
the parlour is cluttered with photographs
of you with me / with our daughter / with
your brother / alone
the mantelpiece is cluttered with incense
Frida Kahlo / candles / Andy Warhol /
Madonnas and christ childs / and a book
of improving quotations propped open at
the last scene from ‘The Tempest’ / that
fucking Auden poem / more flowers / cards
rosaries / beads / tarot cards
and we are choosing your grave goods
It is not cluttered here / everything
is fluorescently simple at Tobin Brothers.
You lie in a stark comfortless room
in a stark cardboard coffin on a trestle
draped with your grave goods draining the colour
from them all / you offer me a cold
kiss and a cold embrace you
do not need these grave goods you
have gone on ahead taking their
colour with you / you are not
here so why am I?
I turn around and look at
the door / it is
a thousand miles away
and I haven’t got to it yet
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