for branwell

This is the story:

From gullet to belly you were

sogging wool and wet ash,
indigenous teeth,
frenetic haste

a twist in your spindle core.

It was the
water, nothing more,
perhaps more than that,

perfunctory, lung-colored,
running noxious from the graves
which scarred the churchyard:

All Dead, and All
Dead,

drinking the flesh and the
dirt of the dead.

This is the story of You.
Candle-wax drunk, with
opium mouth,

Embarrassment (from the dissenting
chorus) and embarrassed

for yourself.

In eighteen forty-three:

her resolve decomposed,

Lydia removed every
trapping of clothes
to bury her nose in your armpit.

You knew
a brief reprieve.

Murmured later:

Reports that she
did not speak,
for some roaringly silent days
or weeks she feared

that her voice would betray your hovering mouth.

You were not born Catholic.
You dreamt her husband slipped
and broke his neck.

You were not born secular.
She sent you money in envelope,
unkissed, impassive.

You broke

sheltered by the beams
of your bed.

A string snapped in your

consumptive chest.

You died without seeing,
through your nebulous vision,
the future.