Dressing the ghost

Of course his clothes don’t fit
no longer even look like him

and the blue light doesn’t suit
whatever tone it is his skin

still keeps. Armour him now,
glove him in chainmail, kit him

in something that clanks
and masks the terrible

thin wight within and
doesn’t mock his former

fuller self the way his old shirts
and pants now do with their whispering

threadbare gestures, their dull-
eyed buttons hanging limp

on wilted stalks. They have lost
their character, no wonder

they lie, resentful, being left
behind. Armour him now,

so we won’t detect the final
disappearing act until

page 193 too late—he’s slipped
behind the arras, out

to the graveyard and
under the stone

flowing like smoke
into a signature that could

be anyone’s, imprinted
by the mason’s hand, our

common dress code.
Read the script.

page 194

When I am laid in earth

(after Purcell, for Jane)

When I am laid in earth
this half-life in your mind
is my continuance—
not long, or loud, but
intermittent, like the fault
in the machine that can’t
be diagnosed or fixed

by anything but patience,
time, or blind chance; a
break in the static, blip
in the daily traffic that allows
a brief transmission through
from our shared history,
whichever part appealed,

appeals enough to you
to hear it, weeks later
and then months, and years;
what you will hear is what’s
essential, true—for you,
who are the quick and thus
the breath of me whose song

has gone to sleep in silence,
but still murmurs when the
trees repeat their leaves
each spring and when
the leaves fade into earth
that I am laid in. I am not
gone until you are.

Remember me.

page 195

Coda

At the funeral
or the film it’s
always the music

does you in:
pouring excess
into dry lines

raising damp tendrils
out of hard but
friable earth, its

cataract forever falling
caterwauling
into the underworld.