Elsi would have been 99 today!

That day after the night death;
that night after the day’s wailing,
I went out on the hill
and contemplated the lit windows
and the stars, those flocks
without a shepherd; and I asked:
‘Is she up there, the woman
who was the pawn that love
offered in exchange for beauty?’

Later I was alone in my room
reading and, the door closed,
she was there, speechlessly enquiring:
Was all well? It was true
what the book said in answer
to the world’s question as to where
at death does the soul go:
‘There is no need under a pillarless
heaven for it to go anywhere.’



You waited with impatience
each year for the autumn migration.
It happened and was over.

Your turn then. You departed,
not southward into the burnished
and sunlit country, but out

into the dark, where there are
no poles, no accommodating
horizons. Last night I loitered

where your small bones had their nest,
the owl blew away from your stone cross
softly as down from a thistle-head. I wondered.