BASED ON JOSEPH BRODSKY'S ELEGY FOR JOHN DONNE

 

ELEGY FOR RAYMOND CARVER 

 

Raymond Carver has sunk in sleep...All things beside 

Are sleeping too: The brass swan paperweight sleeps 

On Hebrew translations, Butts in the ashtray sleep with 

Ash, Chekhov, the lapdog and the wicker chair sleep 

In the intricate weave of willow-like the exiled words of 

Joseph Brodsky. Tess sleeps in a bed of hummingbirds 

The photographs and the pins that hold them sleep in 

The cork they penetrate. His unpublished words sleep 

Piled high in the bunks of America. Belfast and Sligo 

Sleep even the doctor sleeps in a handshake of blue 

Sea and sails. 

A MUSHROOM CLOUD 

 

My poetic superhero is masked up 

Ready to delve into a stanza of war 

Poetry, gas, gas, he can taste 

The sulphurs' stench of hell, over 

The top they go to die. He can 

See the ghost-like skeletons trans- 

Parency like spores of mycelia 

Fallen dead where they stand.  

 

He knows this can never happen 

again, but there are peace-walls 

All over the world, just two little 

Boys and the word happiness. 

He writes fodder, when will we 

learn we have to give peace 

To get peace, his words do 

Their magic.