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Ode to Wisława

Dear Wisława Szymborska
It’s silly I know
To try to write verse for
One dead long ago

Your dark eyes have been gone
Since the year twenty-twelve
Their sockets lie empty
Like empty bookshelves

Your ears they have also
Long turned into dust
The conch shell machinery
Of hearing’s but lost

Your ten fingers are bone now
On no feet do you walk
Your nose smells no roses
And your tongue cannot talk

That despotic-like organ
The one in your skull
Slick gooey magician
Who played tricks on us all

Even that charmer is drained
Of its singular power
Its function reduced
To growing a flower

And how about your heart
(Was it only a pump?)
It’s so hard to believe
It will no longer pump

The swift blood that went travelling
From your head to your toes
Via veins in your hand
Scribbling poems or prose

Yes your heart is gone too
Dissolved disappeared
Like a sun in the distance
By thick darkness smeared

But silly as it may seem
My dear dead poetess
I address you these lines
And this much I confess

Though you're dead I don't think about
Mortality
Though you're dead your voice lives on
Inside of me

I can hear it in the rustling
Of small leaves in the wind
Or in the rumble of lorries
On the streets of my mind

Your voice is the voice of my thoughts
And those of my neighbour
Who makes jewellery out of dead wood
In his bedroom next-door