Craig Raine(b. 1944)
For Hans Keller
There will be more of this,
more of this than I had realised
of finding our friends
irrevocably changed,
skewed like G u y F a w k e s 8 in a chair
b e c a u s e all the m u s c l e s have gone
and talking as if nothing has h a p p e n e d
when nothing has h a p p e n e d .
There will be more of this,
more of c o m i n g to crematoria
to learn that a life can c o m e to an end
like a Haydn quartet,9 without a repeat.
T h e r e will be too m u c h and then more of this,
of hearing instruments negotiate with silence,
S t a t i n g the c a s e with gravitasmoral earnestness
and anxious insect antennae.
We stand for the coffin at a word from the usher.
T h e speaker's hand feels for his pocket,
as his nerves die down
and the nerves take over.
That hand is alive and my feet are alive,
feeling the pinch of expensive new shoes,
and I am moved by being moved
as the coffin crawls to the fire.
H a n s , there is still more of this,
more of undertakers locking the hearse
and seeing the plastic safety bolts
slide, like suppositories, slowly away,
as we re-enter the sunshine alive
with eyes to see by Camden Lock 1
a bedstead, sleeping rough,
like dead beloved bodies everywhere.
KIT W R I G H T
b. 1944