Stumbling midnight tipsy in Jackson’s studio,
who knocked black paint over into tomorrow
and throbbing rainbows of our morning after?

There they are, in the full sight of everyone, winking from
                their stones, “It’s me. Over here. Yeah. Bet you don’t
                believe your eyes. I got in!”

“Feel me to do right,” your father whispered
to you out of the blue of two silences:
his shyness, his dying. How beautifully

come in every size and shape,
wiry and weighty,
jogging and mincing, plodding and sprinting,

“What I am is not important, whether I live or die —
          It is the same for me, the same for you.
What we do is important. This is what I have learnt.

Ah
Mother, the dead
Mother, the dead are deafening now.

The heart bleeds dark.
Death is a journey home.

It is seen that the loveliest girls have begun
To lower their eyes

        Aiee, father of mine, father of mine,
        What are these shouts in the rain, these voices in the air?

"A god can do it"—yes. But a girl?
The Greeks named it hubris,