Still around I see, still drunk,

still barely upright singing Lily of Laguna,

still hanging by your shirt tail.

Even though you’re dead.

I don’t know how you do it Jimmie.

I really don’t. Shiftless. Lord Wistful.

We called you Alexander Impecunious,

forever borrowing two quid till Friday.

I’ve listened to your heart

that never spoke, felt no pulse

thumping in the dead wrist

where I placed lightly my finger.

I’ve pronounced you deceased

late kicked the bucket shuffled off

gone forgotten joined the elder brethren

with the great architect at last.

I’ve held a clear mirror to your face,

sent round a wreath, cancelled your subscription

to the Society of All Mates Together,

put your name in the obituaries.

And I’ve assigned you to the past of verbs.

You with your skin the pallor of dead water.

You will not paint. You will not fish.

You will no longer love the salmon leaping.

I’ve imagined you amongst the dead,

handing in your keys to the desk clerk,

handing in your name and loose change

still protesting you were innocent on Earth.

No one is. We lie to those we love,

we do not love them. Or else

we learn we cannot lie in love,

we cannot love ourselves or anyone.

So you’re a man who cannot love himself.

You’re a man selling salt to the sea.

You’re a dead language and you its only speaker.

You’re a joke in the museum of broken marriages.

And you broke mine. This is my revenge.

What else have I to do? I want

to stand beside your grave and find

some little good to say of you.

I’d like to feel compassion soon.

I want the luxury of some suspicion

I was wrong never to trust anyone since.

I can’t until you’re dead. So die,

old ghost, old misery,

you would have killed me anyway you could.

You betrayed me out of fear.

You tried very hard to destroy me.

So you were down, so you were beaten,

you were weeping in the bar-room,

you were skulking in the western wind

still crying for your childhood in the lowlands.

Old fox.

Got your tail in the water.

Now you die at last.

Here with this form of words. With these:

I feed you to the rain.

I sail your ashes down the wind.

I fade your name among the grass.

I think of you among the vanished.