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ELEGY FOR MY FATHER

HLF, August 8, 1918—August 22, 1997

Bequeath us to no earthly shore until

Is answered in the vortex of our grave

The seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.

—Hart Crane, “Voyages”

If a lion could talk, we couldn’t understand it

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

Under the ocean that stretches out wordlessly

past the long edge of the last human shore,

there are deep windows the waves haven’t opened,

where night is reflected through decades of glass.

There is the nursery, there is the nanny,

there are my father’s unreachable eyes

turned towards the window. Is the child uneasy?

His is the death that is circling the stars.

In the deep room where candles burn soundlessly

and peace pours at last through the cells of our bodies,

three of us are watching, one of us is staring

with the wide gaze of a wild, wave-fed seal.

Incense and sage speak in smoke loud as waves,

and crickets sing sand towards the edge of the hourglass.