CHARLES BAUDELAIRE’S GRAVE

How do you bury a poet?

Surely not

how they buried Baudelaire

thrown in with his parents

like an infant death.

It stretches

to a ghastly irony

Pasternak’s remark

that poets should remain

children.

Do poets really want to trade

the lingering savour

of experience

for guileless eyes?

There’s something

repulsive

about an empty fresh

adult face.

Such baby faces

can be seen in uniform

or with a foot

on a slaughtered tiger.

They can be capable

of anything

or a long lullaby

of nothing.

I want to exhume Baudelaire

and give him his own

magnificent mercurial vault.

From one angle

an arching ebony cat.

From another

sneering black marble

spleen.

No poet

dead or alive

should rot

with their parents.