I wanted to make you a solid writing-table
That would last a lifetime.
I bought a broad elm plank two inches thick,
The wild bark surfing along one edge of it,
Rough-cut for coffin timber. Coffin elm
Finds a new life, with its corpse,
Drowned in the waters of earth. It gives the dead
Protection for a slightly longer voyage
Than beech or ash or pine might. With a plane
I revealed a perfect landing pad
For your inspiration. I did not
Know I had made and fitted a door
Opening downwards into your Daddy’s grave.
You bent over it, euphoric
With your Nescafé every morning.
Like an animal, smelling the wild air,
Listening into its own ailment,
Then finding the exact herb.
It did not take you long
To divine in the elm, following your pen,
The words that would open it. Incredulous
I saw rise through it, in broad daylight,
Your Daddy resurrected,
Blue-eyed, that German cuckoo
Still calling the hour,
Impersonating your whole memory.
He limped up through it
Into our house. While I slept he snuggled
Shivering between us. Turning to touch me
You recognized him. ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Wait!
What’s this?’ My incomprehension
Deafened by his language – a German
Outside my wavelengths. I woke wildly
Into a deeper sleep. And I sleepwalked
Like an actor with his script
Blindfold through the looking glass. I embraced
Lady Death, your rival,
As if the role were written on my eyelids
In letters of phosphorus. With your arms locked
Round him, in joy, he took you
Down through the elm door.
He had got what he wanted.
I woke up on the empty stage with the props,
The paltry painted masks. And the script
Ripped up and scattered, its code scrambled,
Like the blades and slivers
Of a shattered mirror.
And now your peanut-crunchers can stare
At the ink-stains, the sigils
Where you engraved your letters to him
Cursing and imploring. No longer a desk.
No longer a door. Once more simply a board.
The roof of a coffin
Detached in the violence
From your upward gaze.
It bobbed back to the surface –
It washed up, far side of the Atlantic,
A curio,
Scoured of the sweat I soaked into
Finding your father for you and then
Leaving you to him.