BRIAN DEMPSEY'S BROTHER

so - I see
you are the future
people of a 1000 years

beyond me
my words see you
even though I can not

I am the long dead
how curious it is
to be so

and to have you
read me
or of my ever

thinking that
you would
hear my paper voice

finding it hard to believe
this scribbled scrap of paper
could outlive the mind that. . .

never mind
never mind
so you are the new

here and now

and I am
not
am nothing

my only merit
being this
somehow survived

an ordinary
human
from 2017

paper I
must assume is
an outdated mode

of transport
for thought
or word

I am as precious
as papyri to you
my future archeologist

maybe now
mind merely talks to mind
and so you are amazed

to find me
wandering about in country dark
the wind roaring in French

as it prowls and howls
about a house somewhere near
Saint-Priest-des-Champs

I mock the storm
howling at the death
of a loved one

to a night that does not care
It is like I have
never been. . .

so people of a 1000 years
from now
all you can know

is that I was
Brian Dempsey's
brother

and that a night
finds me here
in my despair

calling out his name
the only thing
I own

I am
just this
side of sane

perhaps by now
you have
abolished death

and life goes on
and on and on
without end

or even eased
despair
to such an extent that. . .


here there is a tear
and words alas lost
to what men

used to call time
and to a creature called
a mouse

fire...
a fragment of a mind
reconstructed from

what documents
could be
found

all we know for certain is
that he was
Brian Dempsey's brother

and that seemed to be
his only reason
for existence

and what
we can only
wonder

was this thing
the writer calls
"...despair"