Sonnet for Lucie
I write about your plates and I have written
About your plates the golden plates you left
And crimson in my memory and saffron
The bigger plates so big the cabinet door
Has never once it’s years now since I got them
Closed years now since you died the upper part
Of the door for years the plates have kept it open
The lower part has slowly warped and closed
I write about your plates and in the poem
You gave the plates to me a DVD
A dictionary and I knew you better
Than when I could have known you and I did
-n’t know you well from which I’ve never eaten
And hold the door your dust still passes through
Lazarus
He was I hear a day away I’ve heard
Since it was Mary maybe it was Mar-
tha told me later days or weeks not far
He waited I’ve heard days to leave on the third
My soul it had been floating next to me
Like driftwood floating on a lake my soul
Floated away the waves are small but roll
In and they roll away he waited he
And I were not like he and Mary close
Who chose the better part and he and Martha
Who chose to clean were close and in my heart a
Pit on the third day opened and what rose
From it I never told the Lord I’ve never
Told Mary never told Martha it was rain
But meat not water Abel’s gift who Cain
His own rejected killed and the meat’s savor
Reached me before the first drop struck my face
And filled my nose with smoke from what fire where
He hears I’m sick and dying and waits there
A day away with his disciples days
Before he leaves for Bethany I die
It’s written that for centuries the smoke
Of sacrifice pleased God then I awoke
To Martha picking maggots from my eye
Death Spring Song
Happily I’m now I’m nudged to death
Happy to be alive from inside nudged
Instinctively and with each breath
A heavy grayness flashes leans
A wide flat elbow on my ster-
num leaning like a bigger child
Leaning his after we had were
Wrestling had been his elbow pinning
Me casually and with a mag-
ic I can never learn he keeps
Me down what greater trick than cag-
ing calm a harmful thing forever
As if the caging hadn’t harmed you
As if you weren’t harmed by keep-
ing the thing caged by death once charmed too
Old now to throw away expecting
Another even death’s attempt
To charm me nudged one breath the next
By each I’m happily not exempt
From spring although the spring is death
______________
Shane McCrae’s most recent books of poetry, both published by Corsair, are The Many Hundreds of the Scent, and Cain Named the Animal, a finalist for the Forward Prize. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
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