Often They

 

Often they were warned by light—the nun in Essex, c. 700, who said          lamps the size of rooms

who said my hands          have turned to sun. And another who saw a torch

 

erase a face in perfect peace and know          that the body grows lighter and lighter and that

the sky behind it that          also opens into a plate of day. All these were ways of saying death

 

is something that comes to you as I might come to you as I so often do, slipping an arm around you thinking

not of the gesture, but of what I’m about to say.

 

 

 

The Classical Age

 

glided down from the sky          on other rails          the ghosts of the classical era

often brought advice          often at great expense          to themselves          they cried

child after child          entered the cold room          and so Aeneas descended

 

at the request of his father          but as is usual in such cases         when he actually went to touch him

the bottom fell out of history          resulting in these pastures          that are nothing like and will never be

what in reaching we see          it’s like those blind people who can see through their skin

 

being locked in a windowless room.

 

 

 

As Numerous

 

As numerous historians have documented, it’s ghosts who’ve made the bridge

                                                                                                                             among religions, being common

in every conversation between lovers is a veiled matter of will you save me

                                                                                                                         being the one phenomenon

that nevertheless, there is constantly

                                                             no system that can explain

the endless amazement of the dead.

                                                             That death is impossible

is obvious and incontrovertible—it is all we know

and all we need to know etc.

 

and marriage is a matter of saying yes          it was the ghost          that enabled the early Christians

to convince the pagans          that life would keep on          not ending          just as it always had

despite the equally incontrovertible fact of heaven.