Spirit

I don’t know much about the things of spirit,
though each year the numbers
of my personal dead
keep swelling.

These days, when I try to talk
to my upright, sober, dead father,
I never fail to remember
that first Covid funeral – beautiful, harrowing –
six months ago now, in the first summer of lockdown.

Only the ghost of connection
there between us, but
we sat in the presence of pure sorrow
at a life that was suddenly gone; pure joy
at the full life that had been. There was much talk of God
and of carousing into the small hours, until

I could not tell such things apart
in the general intoxication.

“We must stop crying now,”
someone said, in tears, at the very end.
“Sam would have said: the brandy’s waiting.”

That’s when I knew, all the way
along my blood and into my bones:
I’m still a beginner in the things of spirit.
The only speech I truly know
is with the living, still,
though my father’s voice speaks through mine, uninvited;
though the ashes of dogs remain in their urns on the desk.

Always again I choose
that long draught that burns my throat –
while there is anything left on this side
to celebrate or savour.

 - Jacques Coetzee