Moss, "Ransom"

Death is not Prime Minister or resplendent,
not eternal darkness, silence, or heaven-sent.
Death is an unrepresentative form of government,
a dead mother and father who rule without consent,
a drone in every flower, the Queen in her hive.
They have a room in every house, pay not rent.
Silent at dinner, they deceive, connive,
as the clock ticks. They never say “Live and let live.”

How many times have I tried to sing them to sleep?
Eternal bride and bridegroom,
I do what I do to make my death handsome,
to make them proud, to win a faceless smile by a leap-
ing somersault to childhood. I pay ransom
to my kidnappers, who tie me to their bed — to weep
in their pillow, to sleep, to dream, to do or undo,
to twinkle twinkle in their firmament of two.

Silly to think there was a death: a father and mother
before there was time. Perhaps there was a single egg,
like the egg that hatched love, or something profane, other,
an indebtedness to which we should not pray but beg
for more time. Or do we take a steel shovel and dig,
dig up a God, a Father who had a Holy Mother.
Perhaps love and death were married beneath a single egg,
a sign of resurrection like the butterfly.
Mothers and fathers live until their children die.


Stanley Moss

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