He was selling soap in Lodi, California.

Later, in his car, & dressed

To die, or live again, forever,

I drove to my own, first wedding.

I smelled the stale boutonniere in my lapel,

A deceased young flower.

I wondered how my brother's Buick

Could go so fast, &,

Still questioning, or catching, a last time,

An old chill from childhood,

I thought: why me, why her, & knew it wouldn't last.

Elegies

THOUGH HIS NAME IS INFINITE, MY FATHER IS ASLEEP

When my father disappeared,

He did not go into hiding.

In old age, he was infinite,

So where could he hide? No,

He went into his name,

He went into his name, & into

The way two words keep house,

Each syllable swept clean

Again when you say them;

That's how my father left,

And that's how my father went

Out of his house, forever.

Imagine a house without words,

The family speechless for once

At the kitchen table, & all night

A hard wind ruining

The mottled skin of plums

In the orchard, & no one

Lifting a finger to stop it.

But imagine no word for “house,”

Or wind in a bare place always,

And soon it will all disappear—

Brick, & stone, & wood—all three

Are wind when you can't say

“House,” & know, anymore, what it is.

Say Father, then, to no one,

Or say my father was, himself,

A house, or say each word's a house,

Some lit & some abandoned.

Then go one step further,

And say a name is a home,

As remote & as intimate.

Say home, then, or say, “I'll

Never go home again,” or say,

Years later, with that baffled,

Ironic smile, “I'm on my way

Home,” or say, as he did not,

“I'm going into my name.”

Go further; take a chance, & say

A name is infinite. Repeat all

The names you know, all

The names you've ever heard,

The living & the dead, the precise

Light snow of their syllables.

Say your own name, or say

A last name, say mine, say his,

Say a name so old & frayed

By common use it's lost

All meaning now, & sounds

Like a house being swept out,

Like wind where there's no house.

Say finally there is no way

To document this, or describe

The passing of a father, that

Faint scent of time, or how

He swore delicately, quickly

Against it without ever appearing

To hurry the ceremony of swearing.

And say, too, how you disliked

And loved him, how he stays up

All night now in two words,

How his worn out, infinite name

Outwits death when you say it.

And say finally how the things

He had to do for you

Humiliated him until

He could not get his breath, & say

How much they mattered, how

Necessary he was. And then,

Before sleep, admit, also,

That his name is nothing,

Light as three syllables,

Lighter than pain or art, lighter

Than history, & tell how two words,

That mean nothing to anyone

Else, once meant a world