After your death I took all your things and burned them, the photo's and letters you sent and the lock of hair cut from a passing businessman's suitcoat. Your books and clothes went into the fire also. The next day I hoped for pyromancery and sorted through the ashes for some sign. I found the cover of your poetry anthology, charred, but readable. I folded it and slipped it into my pocket so that for years every time I stuck my hand into that pocket it came out black. When I arrived home I translated this sign into a lament for your things.

Lament for Old Burnt Norton

Who will build us a box for Old Burnt Norton
One that will carry him deep
Who will dig us the hole
Into which we'll place all of his things
His shoes and his rings
And marriage his dry bones into sleep

Our ship going homeward
is a scalpel blade
slicing the green skin of the sea
and if this were his skin would you peel
it back folding reflected brightness
upon brightness
stretch this poor canvas
over tent pegs to dry

The winter white bark of the sycamore
with its skin of leprosy
has a face
and a hand like his

Who will take on the house of Old Burnt Norton
As his cold body goes down
Who will work in the fields
Plough under his crop
And slaughter his stock
When autumn turns alder leaves brown

We can look deeply
at the photograph
as if it were a jade clouded pool
where we hoped we might find goldfish
What we see is only
the blackness of his iris
no different than the pupil
never a burning magnesium thought
or more cedar contemplations

Who will make us a Barley wine for Old Burnt Norton
To warm the hearts all around
Who will unbraid their hair
Rent the stitch of their shirt
And throw a black spade-full of dirt
where the weave of his short life now ends

Beside the grey stones of the road
don't think of the frantic
flit
flit
flit of pigeons

Think instead of the small-winged birds
the sound of a flock
starting into flight
is a splash of gasoline catching fire

Somewhere in its earthy heart the world
is making a fragrance for him
uncorked and poured
a bottle of blood wine
spilled on the compost
or the skin of your knuckles
dusted over
and over
with lavender ash