A Curse Against Elegies

Oh, love, why do we argue like this? I am tired of all your pious talk. Also, I am tired of all the dead. They refuse to listen, so leave them alone. Take your foot out of the graveyard, they are busy being dead. Everyone was always to blame: the last empty fifth of booze, the rusty nails and chicken feathers that stuck in the mud on the back doorstep, the worms that lived under the cat's ear and the thin-lipped preacher who refused to call except once on a flea-ridden day when he came scuffing in through the yard looking for a scapegoat. I hid in the kitchen under the ragbag. I refuse to remember the dead. And the dead are bored with the whole thing. But you - you go ahead, go on, go on back down into the graveyard, lie down where you think their faces are; talk back to your old bad dreams.