Dear Air where you Used to Be²
“Why are they Dead?” To this we
Make no answer – there being None³
Grief’s Damnable Tint is everywhere –
Darkening Days we’re no longer Aware of⁴
Where shall one go who Keeps Memories of the
Dead, except Home again, Faithful to the Fields,
Lest the Dead Die a Second and more Final Death⁵
The Dead who seem to Take away so much, really
Take with them Nothing that is ours – the Passion
They have aroused Lives on after them – easy to
Transmute, but well-nigh Impossible to Destroy⁶
To be Grown up is to sit at the table with people
Who have Died who Neither Listen nor Speak⁷
Tell my Mourners to Mourn in Red – ‘cause
There ain’t No Sense in my bein’ Dead⁸
You Die out in me: down to the Last
Worn-out knot of Breath you’re still
There – with a Splinter of Life⁹
Imagination is having to Live
In a Dead person’s Future¹⁰
¹ Bell Hooks, Appalachian Elegy 10
² Danez Smith, Summer, Somewhere
³ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
⁴ Patricia Smith, Black Poured Directly into the Wound
⁵ Wendell Berry, At a Country Funeral
⁶ E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
⁷ Edna St. Vincent Millay, Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies
⁸ Langston Hughes, Wake
⁹ Paul Celan tr. Michael Hamburger, How You
¹⁰ Victoria Chang, OBIT [The Blue Dress]