Elegy for a Cosmonaut

                           for Dean Young


The year you were born silver birches

tapped on the window

and the curve of a nail clipper

caught some light from a distant star

where gentle beings look down

and shake their heads

the year you learned to speak

you wrote your first poem

and hard working ghosts

used old technology

to create a blue unity

in no way essential to a life of metaphor

the year you got your new heart

the huge god in the mural agreed

it is sad to be only half machine

and live in a future

that belonged to someone else

the year you disappeared

in the marriage of street signs

and a convoy asleep in rain

I finally understood

why you said they say

the little wren is the one

who sings the most notes

but tell that to the bench

carved with all those names

tell that to the sandwich

of glittering water

the year you died I almost resisted

a yellow flower successfully

the year you died it was Tuesday

I touched the spines of your books

their once pale colors now bright

and I heard at last

that distant apiary filling

with the echo of replacement




Reprinted from How To Continue (Economy Press, 2025) with the permission of the author.