In memory of Michel Legrand


Young lovers have from time to time made promises
On midnight docks before the troopships sailed
On dripping railway platforms censed in steam
At bus stops and on glassed-in airport ramps

Young lovers have from time to time made promises
And pledged them in their letters with kisses sealed
And cancelled politicians upside down
Then posted to a world that is not yet

Young lovers have from time to time made promises -
If it takes forever, we will wait for them

When I was younger
I slept in the top bunk
over my older brother

- Pretty soon we’re all going to die -
he was fond of saying
while we listened to Credence
Clearwater Revival on an old turntable
with a penny he taped to the arm
to make it sound like a $100

Pretty soon he got me saying the same
words, like moon, mosquitos and darkness
were in his ear, he’d have dreams of
naked women washing his feet
and sparrows looking out of his eyes

He hollered at old man death
when he was wanting some shuteye

- Nobody on earth is like me -
he’d wake up shouting not meaning
to disturb my sleep

He said - I am the white piano
they threw off the bridge -
- the snake bed and the shade tree -
- I am something, yes-sir-eee -

- I’m something not everybody wants
to believe - he’d say sipping on whiskey
bought from a woman up the holler

He told death to - kiss his white *** -
then holler at me to get out of bed
and go trim the grass around the stone
angels planted up in the high pasture.

Mothers crawl home on all fours
and fathers crack their hammers
into the temples of the moon.

The dogs are long gone.

The children of catastrophe
flick their knives at the sun,

shuffling from ruin to ruin
in their parents’ heavy boots,

stepping over the skeletons
of buildings and hummingbirds.

The children of catastrophe whet
their blades on the skulls of childhood.

They shave their heads
and argue about the history
of chandeliers and ballrooms.

The frogs at the water’s edge
expand into dumb balloons.

Hunted by an army of hollow men,
we race toward the sound of a dog
barking at the edge of the world.

We sleep in shifts,
cursing moonlight.

In our dreams,
the horizon binds us
with a blinding flash—

your hand in mine,
our cells married
and incandescent:

each to each,
ash to ash.