FÜR LOUISE

“I want to live after I die.” - Louise Glück

Congratulations! You can live in the underworld

along with Euridice. You can also find 

like souls in heaven, 

that did not reject the underworld or what lay above.

By living so long already below 

a reward is you get

your writing echoing for a time,

in an empyrean script 

of clouds and minds every day.

Have you found the meaning you were looking for?

Maybe you can’t write now, or don’t need to.

Does that frighten you?

You can’t precisely open your living eyes on earth anymore

but, god help us, there must be begonias and foxgloves where you are.

Paradise was a garden and it generally still is – with its lettuces and wild irises 

and maybe Stanley Kunitz crouching there 

with his trowel and dirty gloves, loving what grows.

You are part of the dream stuff of thousands, 

living after dying

having said your goodbyes hundreds of times.

With so many farewells, Mahler would love you.

Maybe take up with Gustav!

...though I imagine you’d depress each other.

Even he wondered about his Abschied, 

“Won’t people go home and shoot themselves?”

No. Your cranial murmurings, 

your flowers arranged like words on a page,

make us reach almost to you, at the border

with just a little wall between us

and a little smile on your face.