Alan Shapiro
Wherever my Dead Go When I’m Not Remembering Them
Not gone, not here, a fern trace in the stone
of living tissue it can quicken from;
or the dried up channel and the absent current;
or maybe it’s like a subway passenger
on a platform in a dim lit station late
at night between trains, after the trains have stopped--
ahead only the faintest rumbling of
the last one disappearing, and behind
the dark you’re looking down for any hint
of light—where is it? why won’t it come? you
wandering now along the yellow line,
restless, not knowing who you are, or where,
until you see it, there it is, at last
approaching, and you hurry to the spot
you don’t know how you know is marked
for you, and you alone, as the door slides open
into your being once again my father,
my sister or brother, as if nothing’s changed,
as if to be known were the destination.
Where are we going? What are we doing here?
you don’t ask, you don’t notice the blur of stations
we’re racing past, the others out there watching
in the dim light, baffled,
who for a moment thought the train was theirs.
A Name
Forehead to cool bark, hands on eyes, I’m ‘it’
Again, I’m counting while the lost friends scatter,
Their far off voices indistinguishably
Chanting, Find me, catch me, if you can
Now echoing all around the tree, and up
And down the street, and everything’s the same,
Just like it was, as dark comes on, except
The game has changed, the game is backward now:
All I can do is count, I can’t stop counting,
It’s like the counting is a place I’ve found
To hide in from the lost friends’ hidden faint
And fainter, never unheard diminishing ollie
ollie in free out of everywhere
That finds me, catches me even now, ready
Or not still, half a century away,
Here in the after life of being there.