Little fairy, why would you let
leaves fall unsupervised? You gave
cues from roofs formed by branches,
floating above inattentive heads.
When will you resume your joyful labours?
Your arm extends toward the garden,
flat on your autopsy table. Where are the pigeons?
Where are the magpies? Your friends
remain in the garden, reigning in your place
as true masters of the wind.
We walk by,
ignoring the stock-keeper of the garden.
Rumbling voices roll overhead,
somewhere up in the air
you used to rule.
The noise of breathing
forces me to the edge the path, laboured greeting
from the supposedly dead: Hello.
Bones and tendons fix themselves—
the squirrel turns his face to the garden.
Supposed to be in the garden. Somewhere
in the air, birds are looking for your corpse.
Corpse? Somewhere between the moment
I saw you and the moment I walked away,
the hope of your being unravelled.
So that was how you ended. Decaying
on a foreign path, survived by those who stopped
the rolling engines of their mouths,
who silenced their footsteps,
their noisy, foolish rumbling.