TO EAMON
>
Be not unquiet
my wise dead son,
I’ll write your name again
in cobwebs.
You, who are so
implacably dead.
>
With what thin words
left to me, I’ll craft
another epitaph, veins
aching, clawing
at the ravaged, empty past.
>
And it is no long
journey, no memory
but a maze, hazardous.
It is the travel
of a colourless season.
>
But your life, so stormy,
gleams and leaps somewhere
beyond me, as if
a bright fish dreamt it.
>
So I’ll hunt the shoreline,
as some eagles would
be black and come alone,
I’ll hunt a feather,
think of nothing but the shell.
>
Fifteen summers, my first love.
Did they make you a man?
O Absalom, Absalom.
>
TREE AS COSMOS
I have my words
my talismans
my shamans
>
but before you
out of space
out of time
>
I lay down
your smooth bark
the curve of your words
>
as you lie
sacred in time
I caress your skin
>
we speak in air
in blue leaves hissing
beneath us your tendrils
>
weave a trace in time
so old so old
I am young within you
>
as tiny as a notch
in your gravid bark
and I hear you
>
patient as I speak
your name
Manniferous manifest magnetic
>
you have your own alphabet
a syntax of old Gods
I will learn you
>
curator of memory
consecration of time
studded with stars
>
stay with me.