There’s too much time in the mean, ordinary,
Even somewhat shorter than ordinary
Human life, too much clock. Not in the tragic,
No, of course not, not in the tragically short.
But still, it’s painful, it aches in the most, the great,
Sagging void, the wasteland of remembering
That memory has to stagger across, to recapture
The few of so many millions of moments across
So many days, reaching into thousands, reaching
Into decades. My friend died young, too young.
My friend is almost two years gone. But, friends,
When I summon to sessions of thick, silent thought,
After many wanderings, many years of absence,
The picture of the one-legged angel in the cemetery
That he gave as a gift to me, bizarre tchotchke,
It stuns me that he and I lived so long across
The vast swoon of experience intervening,
And we were nobodies, both nobody, broken
Angels striding and disintegrating. He told me
When he returned to the cemetery the next year
The acidic air of the industrial city had completed
Its wear and tear, and the whole stone angel
Had toppled from its last broken ankle. Beware.
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