ON THE DEATH OF HUGH

                         A STEPFATHER

                   Two pairs of pants, one shampoo and a set of golden cuff-links;

                   two pairs of headlamps impelled towards each other
                   on a winding road,

                   windscreens a fractured pattern of refracted light,

                   hands tight on steering wheels -

                   that was all:

                   from sixty to nothing in the space of a second.

                   And the cars,

                   engines purring,

                   nuzzled each other.

                   The man from whose death I profited -

                   two pairs of pants, one shampoo and a set of golden cuff-links -

                   lay on the road.

                   If he'd been Pharaoh -

                   he wasn't Pharaoh -

                    but if he'd been Pharaoh

                   they'd have buried his wardrobe with him.

                   But he wasn't Pharaoh,

                   so we gathered like vultures

                   around the suits and the ties and the undergarments -

                   for he was dead, caput, gone, annihilated,

                   irretrievably dead.

                   Let a hem out here, sew on a button there,

                   send this or that to the cleaners.

                   In the midst of life we are in death

                   and in the midst of death

                   we deck ourselves in a dead man's clothes,

                   blow our fat noses in his handkerchiefs,

                   sport the hat that once encircled his now shattered skull.

                   So I, a vulture

                   flaunting a black silk tie,

                   sit here looking at

                   two pairs of pants, one shampoo and a set of golden cuff-links.