Distant Cousin
It’s like talking to a dog, or a god.
Who calls when someone dies:
some great-aunt twice removed,
not thought of or named since childhood,
if then. Or when somebody’s kid
has kids or gets married again.
Each time I seek the right tone
to murmur in –
condolence, congratulation –
but it’s no good:
the voice at the other end
can only hear emotion, and hears none;
or lives in truth and penetrates the lies
I’ve lived since I moved.
So that talking to me must be
a bit like talking to a dog or god.
There are huge silences. Bored,
I fill them with what
a person might say, and what I
might say back: “You can’t
expect to be interesting if you yourself take
no interest.” I dispute that.
Invasive Procedure
But why do your tentative questions touch
on politics and economics?
I was an artist: as such,
vaguely guilty about not being rich.
Living like any liberal
in a constant enervating anguish
(unlike the conservative’s bracing pose)
of betrayal. Awaiting disaster
(the ocean rising), despising those
who awaited the Rapture.
Now I hurt; you’re hurting. Resurrection
(if that’s what you’re after) differs
from simply waking up. The latter,
however depressed, has some interest
in moving towards the light;
I only want the earth again.
I hope that not hundreds but thousands,
even tens of thousands of years
have passed. I’ll be a bacillus
or the strangest kind of luck
arising from the tomb: a Mummy’s Curse!
My very lack of a claim
on you will be my claim, my unmutated
ineptitude as strong as my primitive language.
Which should answer your questions.
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