[Ave manes a specter] Poem by Michael Palmer

Ave manes a specter
appeared in my dream

a shade with vulture-bone flute
calling to his dead

his unwept unremembered
dead among the terraced

hills and stubblefields
his needlessly dead

in the rusting sands
his comically dead

with lolling tongues
(Lorca's fluted bones

threaded among the nameless)
the recent and the distant

wind and water tossed
dead stars beneath stones

in nomine patri
and of the son

and of the piping the signifying ghost
ghost of pentacles ghost of music halls

spider-legged spider-white ghost
his ancient broken unplayable flute