Sonnet beginning & ending with a line from Merwin
A poem
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.