Blackstar

Yes, something happened on the day he died.

Something was let out of the world, like air

from a balloon. We cried, mostly, for us:

for all those times the world was just an echo,

dully reverberant, and he’d proclaim

himself our avatar; would ease the passage

from our world to his: the rain no longer

just the dull gloss on the known, but stage rain;

something like an accompaniment. He unfurled himself.

Sometimes, he lost a step, but at the last

he leapt again into the inhospitable:

music like the slow unyielding music

of a storm. On the day he died he was ours

again, just like he always knew he would be.

From My Father is Calling the Neighbours Names, published by Vine Leaves Press.