Pavane for a Defunct Infant

After Ravel’s

Many years ago
in a land of summer dresses
where mothers were no
different from princesses,
 
a sickly child shut
up in his room - outside sunshine,
nothing to do but
pretend that he is dying,
 
embalmed in sea breeze,
shrouded in the heavy curtains,
shadowed by a frieze
of rodents in the skirting,
 
the wardrobe ready
to take him in when death occurs,
inside a heady
atmosphere of powdered furs,
 
never taken out,
those hanging suits and wedding clothes,
old uniforms, stout
corsages, and furbelows.
 
All the forgotten
Livery of a time long dead
to wrap the rotten
remains. A boy stuck in bed
 
wants the open air -
and not suffocate inside.
Dreams some headland where
a swallow-dive at high tide
 
takes the breath away.
The sky reflected in the sea
calls to him, don’t let
the body go so freely.
 
There will be the screech
of siren sisters finding him
washed up on the beach
(the phone downstairs begins to ring),
 
and the shrimplike form,
transparent too and cowrie-curled,
like something unborn,
or something out of this world.
 
Empty house, seashell,
the echo, echo, inside you
is enough to tell
who is trying to get through.
 
Eiderdown on ears
can’t stop the breaking of the waves.
All that ends in tears.
All the sympathy he craves.