Simon Jenner

Cavafy’s Headstone

I’ve been sprinkled with death before,

a light covering, a spray of coffee beans

over me, my friends’ pre-emptive café talk

to strike my doubts and doubters dumb.

It tasted more of ground obituaries, as

myrrh might in coffee, and it slaked me, as

coffee never does. This anointing was better

than any modern headstone, which lack future

or feature, whose incisions crumble to hunches

more than the sand, or tiny porphyry chisellings.

It’s such a grain of talk at such tables speaks me

cleared away, by the white surpliced waiter.

Obituary Writer

The fifth age brings obituaries.

You conjure its additive rhythm, scrawl

some bladed fancy of one, read some for an iron lunch.

Then your ancient phones, too close, he says, to the friend

whose forty years on yours, makes a hinge into the dark

of your ancient, merely twenty up, or a drop shelf to the word.

So he directs the quality to you, the editor.

Young, she’s your companion now, to walk you

so many deaths you write on brandy tinted evenings.

This is the life in eight hundred, you gnarl,

geared to her malachite stone commissions.

You start at so many boring old friends

she thought you knew, and you will, so

compact they are in your fingers, as she is in your arms

who steps you this way death; you’ve arrived.