Lullaby
for Finn
What can we sing to get him to sleep
Brahm's Lullaby with missing words
and la-la sounds? What others
can we dredge from memory? From arms
that held generations of ghostly infants
and the lullabies gone into ghostliness
sung so softly and at such comfortable pitch
no critics present, in deep still darkness
with night-lights or candles, rain or wind
so those pacing and singing seem to have no bones
like ghosts but can gesture, repeatedly
with the scything rocking movement of a cradle.
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