Jack Gilbert - How To Love the Dead lyrics

She lives, the bird says, and he means nothing. Silly. She is dead and available, the fox says, knowing about the spirits. Not the picture at the funeral, not the object of grieving. She is dead and you can have that, he says. If you can love without politeness or delicacy, the fox says, love her with your wolf heart. As the dead are to be desired. Not in the way marriages are, nothing happens again and again. Not in the woods or in the fields. Not in the cities. The painful love of being permanently unhoused. Not color, but the stain.