Sina Queyrus

 

Elegy Written In A City Cemetery

Somebody left the world last night, and last, and
last, and last: wild is the glower of wind, and words 
too thin, too meek to shelter. Lament in rhyme, she 
says, lament in roses: he was, and is not! It will 
always be darker soon, colder, you who are part 
anger who bent down in winter, know that your 
prayers cannot dismiss the darting shade. No, let us 
not shit upon the ground near the lone pile with ivy 
overspread, and let me not your giddiness flatten,
for so fine the season, so serene the hour and all I 
have left of that moment is this torn scrap.

I weave my bones thru the freeway haze at Rincon, 
the self returns again, my natal self: what you see is 
the red-shouldered judge of the Quirky and Dead. I 
am not man, man is death, and the world pain. We 
were all uncountable stars then: the tilt of earth is 
beautiful from every angle.

I mourn for Adonis—I expected her to look more 
dead in the casket. Let them bury your big eyes 
death, be not loud; your hand did not give her this 
blow, she was borne to church on glasses of Grey 
Goose: Only the bottle knows she is gone. Damn the 
snow, an uneven basin to stroll: the curfew tolls the 
knell of closing time. The moon still sends its 
abundant light. It is a hard time among these 
stones, for all the toppled, liquid graves. A slumber 
did your spirit steal. At Wilshire & Santa Monica 
an opossum crossed. I thought, two forms move 
among the dead, high sleep, so prescient your
absence.

Small is the poet’s needle, God knows: but inside
the heart a broken night advances in its glass. 
Death knelt among the starving children on your 
plate: I sometimes think of those pale, perfect faces 
who die as cattle, and I can not sleep.

The city you graced was swift. Now that the 
Summer of Love has become the milk of tunnels; 
now that the chestnut candles burn, so may the 
trees extend their spreading, there is blessing in this 
gentle breeze. What need of bells to mark our loss? 
Shall I go force an elegy? The dead sing Turn the 
lights down sweetly. No more for us the little 
sighing, nor the grand. All the new thinking is still 
about loss.