Burger King of the Dead
And Anticlea came, whom I beat off
—Ezra Pound, Canto I
The dead are driven wild by the broiling meat
and soon the line is out the door. I don’t recognize her at first
but when I do I tell her the lie mothers wait all their lives
to hear: that everything’s going to be all right when nothing
will ever be all right again.
Her days had drifted away, kites over a blustery sea.
Her tomatoes had dropped into the world never to be eaten.
What do I know about faithfulness and grief and sorrow?
What are my voyages and monsters compared
to her islands of loneliness?
—Title poem from Burger King of the Dead (Grayson Brooks).