"Father, Mother, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al." by Stephen Dunn

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Father, Mother, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al.

I've sensed ghosts more than once,
    their presence
a kind of plucking from the memorious air.

Always they reveal themselves as lost,
    surviving
on what's loose in me, some last words

I never said, some I did. I've heard
    they can't live
if fully embraced, if taken fully in,

yet I do nothing but listen to their
    wingless hovering,
the everything they never say.

If only I could give them what they need,
    no, if only
I could convince myself these things

must die as naturally as apples
    on the apple tree...
but that's Nature, which is never

wrong, just thoughtless and without shame.


-- Stephen Dunn

John Donne

[bohemiachiquita.livejournal.com]

The Computation.
by John Donne

For the first twenty yeares, since yesterday,
I scarce beleev'd, thou could'st be gone away,
For forty more, I fed on favours past,
And forty'on hopes, that thou would'st, they might last
Teares drown'd one hundred, and sighes blew out two,
A thousand, I did neither thinke, nor doe,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you;
Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call this not long life; But thinke that I
Am, by being dead, Immortall; Can ghosts die?