Читать книгу Mercy Wears a Red Dress - David Craig - Страница 11

occasionally returns—

not so flinty as he could be in life.

He’s up for most sport, doesn’t seem

to mind that he’s not very good

at volleyball or field hockey—or that

it’s tough to move in that suit, cravat,

nez thing. He’s happy, and being tall

helps in all kinds of ways. Don’t

know for sure if he’s onto

the bigger road yet, but I hope so:

mistakes are just mistakes after all,

each gone soon enough, like the bad

in everybody’s life. I hope

to meet him, though he’ll probably

have moved on by then.

Maybe HD is with him, Pound as well—

who could certainly captain any team—

“Father and Gateway to the East.”

That had to count for something.

HD has to work off the Freud, WC

Williams, his sure pace; at the well,

always, it seems, at the well.

But I like to think that Cuchulain

has been comforted, his shroud completed,

all these years after the mummy dance.

Most everyone you want to, I suspect,

you’ll get to see over there, if you

get over the humps yourself that is.

I like to think of WB lying down

in a meadow his language helped create:

a nice blue moss interspersed, all

the trees you want. Other folk,

fans, as well, real and otherwise.

The high “e”s will offer just

the right amount of resistance

as you recline; recumbent liquids,

consonants making no end

to that repose.

Birds would lace the edges,

and you’ll probably be able to hear

the sound of distant laughter. Maybe

his chords, notes, are like the future,

calling him, us. Maybe it was

always like that—nothing can take

what he’s given, nor the care

with which he gave it.

And his friends, family, politicos?

They’re all laughs, arms about

the shoulder now. The good

is the good, after all, and that

was what brought them to him

in the first place.

His life—a life like yours, mine,

but not at all like either;

a worthwhile stop, short or long,

on the road to more.