Matthew Zapruder

ELEGY FOR TUESDAY

The phone rings
and someone tells you
another great poet died.

Now you have to tell
sleep it has lost
its most curious denizen.

Most of the world
doesn’t know it’s a death mask
in a glass case.

One cloud says
I was the one
who taught her

you can start
anywhere and end up
explaining everything.

Another replies
you were just her apprentice
of resembling.

Yes it’s true
you can read her book
and still find the door to the past

and yes the war
survived her
but not her poems

secretly continuing
the work of wondering
all the wrong things.

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