You were dead, but we met, dreaming,
Before you had died. Your name, twice,
Then you turned, pale, unwell. My dear,
My dear, must this be? A public building
Where I’ve never been, and, on the wall,
An AIDS poster. Your white lips. Help me.
We embraced, standing in a long corridor
which harboured a fierce pain neither of us felt yet.
The words you spoke were frenzied prayers
To Chemistry: or you laughed, a child-man’s laugh,
Innocent, hysterical, out of your skull. It’s only
A dream, I heard myself saying, only a bad dream.
Some of our best friends nurture a virus, an idle,
Charmed, purposeful enemy, and it dreams
They are dead already. In fashionable restaurants,
Over the crudités, the healthy imagine a rime
When all these careful moments will be dreamed
And dreamed again. You look well. How do you feel?
Then, as I slept, you backed away from me, crying
And offering a series of dates for lunch, waving.
I missed your funeral, I said, knowing you couldn’t
hear.
At the end of the corridor, thumbs up, acting.
Where there’s life… awake, alive, for months I think of
You
Almost hopeful in a bad dream where you were long
Dead.
Carol Ann Duffy
