Death, I will not touch you (2002)

Dedicated to Bill Wallace, who (inadvertently) inspired this poem.


Death, I will not touch you:
you are yet more flesh
I crave to touch.

You are visionary; you are
looking out from
a dark room.

There is a glint
of light, where
a bullet perforated
the paper wall
of my chamber

(from outside...
all the clamour outside:
the sleepless demanding
to be let in).

I dream
that you
look in
on me.

Business
is slow
in the dead letter office.

And these
cold headstones,
the wind combing grass
in waves;

the sky
a sleeper
never waking.

There is no
customer.