the pianist is the gleeful gravedigger
who laughingly shows around the love traveler
I only want him to bury me
in a deep sleep in the darkest dark

Ludovic Janvier

Seeing me hanging on
to the arm of an old man as cruel as accomplished
my father rolls over in his grave and says with a look from a bygone time
—Answer because I can hear you Is it the note or the silence you’re in love with…
My father would’ve had much more to tell me if the storm hadn’t set in
Pause between two claps of thunder The artist makes the most of it to belt out his song
Without respect without manners he even boasts of asking the dead to the ball
He’d foot the bill for the violins without balking
My father then whistles the two syllables of my name
and lies back down like those in limbo
pulling over his shoulder’s contempt
a heavy bedspread of dirt and grass