LEONORE WILSON

Good Friday

an elegy for Len

I walk the city like a widow… no anchor, core or center--

    in my assembling of want, I walk, not stroll,

domination of my heart’s need in the undifferentiated litany

    of holy week I walk since after three years

the brain crushing hours still exist since you took your life;

    my traitor, how I want to exorcise you, purge

you like poison, you who thrive in the largesse  

     of my psyche; there are things worse than death--

to leave the living languishing in exile, watching

     the clock’s second hand sway slowly as a bayonet.

I follow block after block, my shoulders ache, my throat

     dry as if everything’s obscured by a crypt of haze

though the breath of spring glistens on the faces of errant

     dogs and ailing beggars, and the church bells ring out

as if to stop this incessant thinking of you in your fifties

     flat overlooking the starlings’ song, the red

camellias bursting big as teacups; how my mind compiles

     the dates when you stayed alive and why,

afternoons we deliberated over things that were common

      knowledge, and things ineffable, when I believed

in happiness, lying in your curtained bed with the freshened

      linens over us; life was often cruel and senseless, except

for you who could make windmills appear out of thin air,

      windmills and a river, meadows and green willows,

you who could make the whole of nature gentle and dreamy

      as you glided over your Tartan rug, in your blue

dressing-gown, and served me tea and jam on a silver tray

       making broad sweeps  of your arms as if you were

the Lenten full moon itself making waves....

_________________________________

You wanted love, that innocuous little cloud that turned into

        a blaring wind, you wanted a man to fit

your format, not a woman, certainly not one married, a mother

         of parasitical milk and saturnine shadows; your despair

was fueled by sickbed fools who crooked their middle

         fingers and left you swelling in regret.

You were like me, seeing every tragedy as some postmodern

         resurrection; bodies were vehicles

of suffering and you became the candles, the flowers, the pill,

         to those who determined your damnation.

What a landslide of buried louts, of those who told you

          about their harpy needs which meant

all the time you spent with them was followed by an indiscretion.

          Not yours, theirs; they were scavengers,

disgruntled seeing you as a moment’s property, cursory fortune,

          something to feed a venial appetite.

And you, my fool, thought your own self-effacing humiliation,

         your unease, could buoy up the living?

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Ha, now look at what is left of us, I say, here let me whisper

        you a dossier of truth: I confess I am transfused

in the marrow of your bones, your ash; your living twin always

        waiting for that jolt of clarity to make me cease,

keep me from these tired routes up and down in this imploding city

        of St. Francis, but there is no solid place where I can

grieve, no plot, no headstone, no handswept lawn, no path-end or          

        stone bench where winter bulbs hence March open

chalice-like upon the land; no, instead I smell the soot

       of you everywhere in your quiet haunts: the leather

bars, the shabby bookstores, the queue of foreign-cornered cinemas.

       I see your hoodwinked eyes hidden under

the skinny claws of a hundred black umbrellas. I taste

       your body in the tumult and torpor of each

Catholic schoolboy carrying his sack of sex like some uncomely

        fruit. I feel your sweaty unshaven cheek,

your haloed rope swinging above me like the rankled ticking

         of a heartbeat. I am the house you arsoned,

the garbage you left rotting, you who glare at me like every stillborn

        saint from a towel sized cathedral window

where God in his calamity of angels and all too human longing

        was jealous of his son, and hung him on a cross.

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Dear confidant, forgive me, I took your Corgi, your sickly beast,

     the one you disowned, your pricey papered pedigree

I expected him to be my foxhole buddy, my furry succor,

     instead he vomited, he bled, he wouldn’t eat,

staining my new carpets with his grief, his mouth indeed

     would open but he never howled, his silence

unbearable, leaving my dry cabin empty as a ghost.

      No, I didn’t have to coax him to his death,

he lay there on the metal table with his twiggy ribcage

     heaving and took his execution like communion

as I knelt and rubbed his skull down with my fists, while

         my glib soul grew oddly happy with relief.

_______________________________________

I left your favorite coats at the cleaners, the soft as dune-

         grass jackets, one ripped like human flesh,

as I imagine your mind was that awful goodbye-day in February

        when you tied yourself to the basement ceiling,

(mad  Prometheus of your own doing) kicking in mid-air

        suffocating in high relief.  I cannot retrieve

your moldy calf-skins you shed before you fled,

       they’ve been on meat-hooks for months,

they scare me, totems of your bullying and dread,

         frightful as mourning suits worn at a funeral,

you had none, no service that is, no incense censored

         above your name, no eulogy, no celebration

of what you stood for, no one wanted it, you left no

       instructions, you just pitched yourself

into the void, your invidious tongue nailing every obscenity

         down before you leapt into the pyre.

_____________________________________

So what do I want from you? Not your clothes, your scapulas,

       your dirty books, your whips, your pantry of Santeria

statues, not your poems, or your opiates; you see I’m flogged

       forward in this nightmare of bereavement.

I walk ad infintium, as if moving is some palliative, or prayer

        as if in my exodus I will find the meaning to this malady,

and absolve you, my love, my animus, you who left my thinning

       spirit raging like a sibyl; you could have given me some prescient

warning like a foghorn.  Your father snuffed himself out

        with a hose, your uncles with guns, one by one,

and so you phoned  saying NEVER, never, I promise you,

       the losers,.. but ah, my fucking liar, savior, Judas,

then cease my constant drifting, give me good reason

       you chose to be the final family idiot who did?