One of your hairs fell out last night:
A piece of your life was gone without a sound.
I know a difficult day is coming,
My heart, pierced, utters a quiet cry.

Let my childhood smile againin the sun
And turn me into an innocent little headlouse
So I can crawl through the jungle of your hair
And sing a song of darkness in its fragrance.

Under your fingernail-roof Ill sleep in my house;
In my black dream Ill water your black trees.
Ill pick black fruits, and hair-jungle bees
Will bring me black poems to be opened.

How will I live, without your hair?
How will I breathe, without its fragrance?
How will I survive, when I am discovered
By ghosts of wooden combs combing your hair?

Let me wear shows made of dawn-flowers
And crawl without a sound into your sleep.
Ill take the place of the hair thats gone
And sing of hair-clouds flying from night to day.

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have one.
It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance -- that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die

Were you close? Im asked, as if grief
Would sting less deeply were we friends
As well as son and father. Further apart
Two men could never meet, though blood bends

Through arteries, veins and capillaries
Summoned into Presence by his pleasure.
On that I could have grown more slowly -
Remember being held, and cradled like treasure.

He grips the pew
with tiny formality,
attempts forced silence

and laughs as he imagines
daddys suit bursting
from sweaty skin.

The singer sways
while everyone else is
motionless.

He has never seen
his parents so stiff.
God is making them behave.

He thinks the bench tastes pretty good.

Wedding Poems