...because you have died forever.
~Federico Garcia Lorca, Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias


I once consorted
with the stone-wrought saints
of Old World cathedrals
but now I salt rivers
and from furrowed fields
make wastelands
because you have died forever.

*

I do not know you dead.
In my mind your hands still warm
nine-irons, and you discourse
on square-cut diamonds
and the state of the dominion.
I do not want to know you dead

and so I study Whitman’s lilacs,
Akhmatova’s poplars, imbuing myself
with the rage of Dylan Thomas;

but no one feels me like Federico --

he who has also held
the taste of oranges and almonds
on the tip of his tongue,
and who will meet you
on the other side of the sea country.