On the first day of viburnum
I followed a school bus for five miles
past the magnolias and the copper lions
to the shad-men rocking and sleeping in. their bleached
      boats.
I had just read Pound again and I was thinking
of his brain floating by me in the universe
and his dead body lying face up at Rapallo.
I picked him some violets, for his bitter nose,
and one or two strands of dry forsythia
for his empty hands, something to wave and wave
as he did his bitter business with Kung and Jefferson.
Later that day as I was driving past
my silver cliffs I stopped to pick him some grass,
and thought, if he could wait, I’d get him radishes
or daisies, when they come. Dead poets like him
are all for flowers, they still like to sniff
and stare in the air—vaguely—like sensitive horses,
their eyes filled up with grief and yearning.
If I had the casket before nae I would put
a sunflower in the paw—he wouldn’t mind—
as if he were lying there waiting to jump up,
waiting to shout, “It’s me, it’s me, I live
for beauty, I live for justice,” and then sink back
on the satin pillow, his hair falling over the edges,
the crimson gone from his face, the yellow back.
Dear poets of Perigord, dear poets of New York,
I stopped at a small park on the way back
to think about the centaurs and the white oxen.
I thought we’d share the light between us, I thought
we’d talk about Flaubert and his contempt
for la bêtise moderne, or for that matter
we could talk about the Venice of dreams
or we could turn to American poetry
since World War II and the function of government