Sonnet beginning & ending with a line from Merwin

 

I think always of you waiting

Though why this should be I don’t know

The strange vague esteem of the living

Imagining the dead have nothing more to do

 

Than hunger after their time on earth —

The kisses, the rifts, those indifferences, those whims —

All the range that once was feeling’s surfeit

That, memoried in the light of death, seems

 

Holier, more desired — yes, that romantic dreck

While I know it’s only fantasy & hope

Still brings me closer to you — such fake

Scenarios, silly dreams really there to help me cope

 

With a lifetime of words that no longer can be said

Now these words of the living, talking to the dead.