Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum

Bring me my inhaler and my ashplant,
Bring me my umbrella and Gannex overcoat.
Oh clouds unfold, we're going for a walk.

Two days before he died
He dictated his 'Farewell to Poetry'
To his sallow-eyed amanuensis
And sent it to The Poetry Review.

His last will and testament read thus:
Remember the givers of short shrift.
Scatter my ashes across the gazebo floor.
And plant my ash-stick among the saplings.

On his bedside table, next
To the Collected Poems of Philip Larkin
His pen lay gleaming like a scalpel
Which had not drawn blood for years.

His final words were: Fuck Bob Lowell!
His bleary-eyed wife drew the curtains
And sobbed quietly into a lavender handkerchief.
In the dew-tipped dawn England was blooming.

On hearing that his Opus Posthumous
Was in line for the Whitbread Book of the Year
His soul rose to heaven like a weather balloon.
Scotched by icy conditions in the mesosphere,

At 80,000 feet the stitching burst
And he fell back down to earth
Headlong into the maelstrom
Of vowel and verb.


*First published in The Schuylkill Valley Journal

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