by Michel Faber
precisely at the time I must locate
and contact anyone who ever cared.
It’s up to me to set a date
for them to come and see you burned.
Some are up for it and others aren’t.
Some can travel when others can’t.
Some can make it, but only after
you need to vacate
your temporary accommodation.
Some need assistance with their fare.
Some cannot bear to share a space
with current partners of their exes.
Some have a problem
with the absence of religion.
I must negotiate, I must behave with grace.
I’m scared, it’s all been left too late, I wish
that we could handle this
together.
You Were Ugly
You were ugly, at the end.
You knew it and I knew it.
Bald, bloated, piggy-eyed,
your flaccid arms bruised black,
your belly mildewed with malignancies,
your vulva and eyelids hairless,
your pupils crossed and sightless,
your breasts weighing down your heartbeat,
your bedbound body seventy-five kilos
of spoiling meat.
Now, choosing photos for your funeral,
I see again how beautiful you were.
How routinely, ravishingly lovely,
how graceful in the flesh,
how happy in your skin.
I called you Gorgeous at the end.
All lovers have names for each other
that are not their names.
Gorgeous was mine for you.
It wasn’t true,
in those days before you finally
let yourself go.
You knew it and I knew it.
You were ugly.
But not now.
Not now.
Your Ashes
Your ashes are heavy.
More than I thought.
I carry the shopping bag,
the canister the funeral director
supplied, towards the train
along the main street, cafés, chain stores,
footsore tourists with bags like mine
containing bottles of spirits
lighter than your remains.
I feel like I bought
too much.
You Loved To Dance
In a previous life
in impractical shoes,
you loved to dance.
Sometimes all night,
embraced by sound and light
and maybe by my predecessors:
slinky steppers, snazzy dressers.
Mainly you danced with female friends –
women I would have liked
to invite to your farewell.
I phoned their phantom numbers
gleaned from address books in forgotten drawers.
Google chewed names, chased spoors.
But they could not be found,
these chums who beamed into your face
as you flung your youthful limbs around.
So no one at your funeral ever saw
you in that state of mindless grace,
under a mirror ball, twirling on the floor.
I was no dancer;
you knew that from the start.
My feet securely stowed under the desk,
I databased the avant-garde.
I hated disco, and rejected as grotesque
the party fodder in the charts.
You should have left me to my Art,
put on your high heels and whirled free.
But then, God help you, in mid-spin,
you fell.
Fell hard, for me.
We danced so rarely that I can recall
each time we did it, and to what.
Twice in the mouldy flat where we first met.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark –
‘Dead Girls’ – not many couples dance to that.
I played you Severed Heads; you took it
in your stride.
‘Those frequencies!’ you cried. ‘They’re uterine!’
German electronica? ‘Divine!’
I brought my sounds to where you lived,
out in suburbia, where your neighbours dozed
to Barry Manilow, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac . . .
I spoiled their barbeques with my cassette
of Dirtdish by Wiseblood. You cranked it up,
adored its crude industrial attack. The noise,
to me, was pure aesthetics and, to you, pure sex.
You liked the way I moved in bed
but, looking back, I fret –
Maybe you were less impressed
with how I moved when I was fully dressed.
In 1991, we danced again.
In Hegyeshalom, a hundred miles from Budapest,
dog-tired, our bellies stuffed with palacsinta,
we stood to leave the tavern, suitcases in hand,
but then were serenaded by the band.
They’d asked our country, and misheard
‘Australia’ as ‘Italia’, and so
to violin, accordion and goodwill,
we smooched to some old continental ditty.
I showed them how men dance in a big city.
I’m sure they’re smirking still.
Come the new millennium,
what with one thing and another,
we danced just one more time:
at our wedding, in a crowd of revellers
assembled in a Polish seaside town.
I did my best to lay my hang-ups down
and shake my tight teetotal ass.
And you know what? It was a blast.
Then ten years passed.
A thousand chances that we didn’t take.
And then, when you got ill
the drugs played havoc on your feet;
you stopped responding to the beat.
Our wedding dance would prove our last.
Half a dozen dances in a quarter-century.
I doubt you thought that that was all there’d be.
Frustrated? Bless your heart. You never said.
You made the most of meagre chances.
I wish sometimes you’d had a gigolo,
to take you where I could not go.
I dance sometimes, alone, to Severed Heads.
Rubbing It In
For seventy-five months
I slowed my pace,
a fraction more each week,
to stay in step with you.
At first, I walked more or less
normally, like a healthy man
with a headache or tight shoes.
Incrementally, I cut
the span of my stride,
always maintaining eye contact,
or distracted your attention
to the road ahead,
so you wouldn’t notice
what was happening to my tread.
The more chemotherapy you had,
the more I handicapped myself.
At your side, I mimed an easeful motion
while conjuring chains around my feet.
We moved, eventually, like the Myeloma Twins.
We tortoised to the outskirts of the room,
climbed the distant summit of the stairs,
voyaged to the far end of the street.
Towards the end, when I would inch with you
to the Ultima Thule of the hospital loo,
I’d ceased to pretend.
Today, I jumped on a mountain bike
and cycled eight miles, to get something done,
goddamn it, in a hurry.
It was easy.
A shameful lapse of tact.
Flaunting the fact
that I don’t have what you’ve got.
Forcing you to swallow
that
I’m alive
and you’re not.
Restraining Order
Unshaven, shabby and unwashed,
I haunt the place where we last slept
together, and refuse to leave.
Why no one calls the cops to move
me on, I do not understand.
Surely someone will lay a hand
on my clammy shoulder, and say
‘Nothing more to see.’
In the beginning, all that love
was awfully romantic in its way,
but now the novelty’s worn thin
and normalcy is overdue.
This loyalty to what’s dead and gone,
this clinging to what’s no longer
mine; it’s borderline obsessed.
Give it a rest.
A polite suggestion, buddy:
Give her some space. Steer clear
of where you think she ought to be.
She won’t be there. Instead, why not
give some thought to personal hygiene.
Adopt a healthier diet. Keep well-hydrated.
Find other topics of conversation.
Maybe join a group of folk like you,
to talk things through.
By all means take some time
to grieve, but don’t let it become
excessive. Accept the situation:
you’ve lost her. Try not to be
possessive.
Account Holder
The helpline man
refuses to help
because I am not you.
He needs – by letter – proof
that you are dead, he needs
to see your name and your disease
and the date your suffering ended
so that our bills can be amended
to be mine instead, all mine,
and then and only then
will the helpline men
let me go ahead
and wait in the queue
and listen, listen, listen,
holding on for that hush
when the music stops
and a voice, at last, will ask
how they can be
of assistance.
Don’t Hesitate To Ask
So many of the people I’ve
informed that she is dead
have said
‘If there’s anything
we can do, anything at all,
don’t hesitate to ask.’
Well,
actually,
since you offer,
yes:
Would you mind driving me
headlong through the universe
at ten million miles an hour,
scattering stars like trashcans
scorching the sky?
Put your foot to the floor,
crash right through the gate of Fate,
trespass galaxies, straight over
black holes and supernovas
to the hideout of God.
Wait for me while I break
down the boardroom door
and drag the high and mighty fucker
out of his conference with Eternity,
his summit on the Mysteries Of Life,
and get him to explain to me
why it was so necessary
to torture and humiliate
and finally exterminate
my wife.
But no.
These things I do not say
because I know
that by ‘anything at all’
you mean
a cup of tea
or a lift into town,
if you’re going
that way
anyway.
They Say
They say –
they who have done this grieving thing
before me –
they say, in time, the sharp recall
of horrors fades away, leaving
room for gentler, happier, further-distant
glows of reminiscence.
Others say –
I will forget your face.
Bring the years on.
Watch this space.
Please Leave All Baggage On Board
Bewildered, meek, I lift my magazine
to let the hostess check I’m safely clasped.
Around her neck, the sleek transparent tube
of an oxygen mask, so similar to an IV line.
Her life jacket’s just for Show And Tell;
her spiel about emergencies has passed
unnoticed in our massive metal shell. Sit tight,
and once we have permission we’ll be on our way.
Enjoy this flight. Tomorrow we’ll be in the USA.
The plane crawls forward, picks up speed, and then
heaves off the ground. This is the moment when
we’d take each other’s hand, and gently squeeze:
another journey formally begun. Seated at my side,
a stranger with vermilion claws.
Her gaze implores the crew. They make her wait.
Oh, how she longs to medicate herself with wine.
Much later, in the ghostly light, she’ll lay
her lacquered hair against my arm
and sleep, consoled at last, as, by remote control,
this raft of bodies is dispatched towards its goal.
The Sorrento Hotel Invites You To Help Conserve Water
I leave this hotel room the way I found it;
the bed so neat and spotless, it’s as though
nobody slept here, nothing happened, and instead
the guest just paced around it, fully dressed
and, at the shrouded window, sat and traced
the slow disintegration of the view.
The maids will love me: all they’ll need to do
is smooth the sheets a little, set the pillow straight,
replace a plastic trinket of shampoo.
But late last night, if you’d been here with me,
after we’d talked about the food, the town,
the petty details of the day, and laid
our jetlagged bodies down to rest, I guarantee
we would have turned to face each other
and, in a heartbeat, been each other’s lover
and this huge bed, this monument of kitsch
would have been joyously unmade,
the pillows crushed, the quilt pulled down,
the blankets pitched onto the floor,
the sheets all churned and christened
with our smell.
And, in the morning, cleaning personnel would wheel
their trolley in, survey the scene, and understand
this bedroom held a woman and her man.
Wake-up call. You’re dead another day.
The hotel hopes I have enjoyed my stay.
Dolmades
My stroll in Central Park
was safely unremarkable. It rained,
the children never ventured from their homes,
the autumn colours gloomed to monochrome.
The birds were just like any birds you’d seen
a thousand times before, the squirrels
standard issue, and the dogs
constrained by their indentured walkers,
heads down, trained, routine.
Nothing to move you, nothing to spark
a flash of rapture, and no scene of pathos
to provide you with a fruture reverie.
Nothing gained, if you’d been lent another year
to come here on this New York trip with me.
The subway – always full of risk
of some transcendent incident,
some spate of oddness to provoke
your love of people – played it cool,
stayed untransporting, free of wild event.
Just trains and passengers,
brisk and destination-bent.
OK, there was that busker, pitched
at 59th,
right near the exit, wet, and blowing
‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’’ on the clarinet.
But on your scale of one to ten
I bet he would have scored a two, a three at most –
too slick, too low on poignancy, too knowing
to plant in you a fond ‘Remember when . . .?’
More good luck: none of my hosts
have cats. No mogs to bring you to your knees
with helpless, let-me-be-your-mum desire
Unless I count the pictures – thumbnail glows –
displayed by Maya, on her phone,
of absent Ollie posing in her other home.
But no, I think this sight would not have made
a deep impression; you’d have praised him, I suppose,
but then forgotten fast
this gadget glimpse, not meant to last.
And so my first adventure, after you, goes on.
Before I know it, I’ve survived this city,
shaken hands, attended dinners, struck no one
as a pathetic wreck; I’ve laughed; been witty,
never once collapsed, or been undone
by grief, by pity, by regret.
Incredible how, on the taxi ride
to catch my onward flight,
life pulls out all the stops to spare me pain.
The driver’s nice, but has a spiel
to which you would have been immune, I feel.
In any case, had you been there, you might
have snoozed (as you so often did in cars)
and missed his anecdotes about the mayor
who gave LaGuardia its name.
I’m sure you’d not have thanked your stars
you came.
Not looked at me and squeezed my hand
as if to say ‘How lovely that my life contained
this precious moment too!’
Now, at the airport, I relax.
I’ve made it, I’ve escaped intact.
Security’s all smiles, they wave me through,
they let me keep my razor, I retrieve my shoes,
my wallet, keys, I’m good to go.
Perhaps, now that I’m nowhere that I know,
four thousand miles from where I lost you,
I will find that distance tricks the mind
and leaves the longing stranded in a far-off place.
Look: I’m moving on
to the departure lounge, where I will wait,
dog-tired, at my appointed gate,
penned in a space so soulless even you
would see no merit in it. No, come on, admit it:
it’s just as well you didn’t make it.
You’re better off not being here.
To fill the empty minutes till it’s time,
I stand perusing airport food – the usual fare:
banana muffins, bagels, sandwiches in cellophane,
