And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond
the language of the living.
“Little Gidding” T.S. Eliot
In my blood garden,
up the softest path
my hardy center
lifts life like water,
holds death like warm earth
on a sunny day
on Sunday. Funeral spectators stand.
I do not sleep now.
“I do not sleep less,”
never-be daughter
said, “first, lift me up
then, bury me deep
build mounds, round with bone
relics of my no-life to drunk Buddha.”
I do not sleep now.
I talk in questions.
Recite holy text
about life and grief
where no solace,
is offered by the dead
who must speak fluently without our words.
Never-be daughter
said, “I do live there
where splendor is lost
because of your grief
I tell you now,
the most beautiful life
does not exist on your death-wailing earth
where I am not real
as flowers are not
in winter’s reprieve,
a transient rest.”
Is there a date you will awake and be
a flower from my mothering sorrow?
