Poetry from The Literary Review

I haven't buried you father

    Lut de Block
I haven't buried you father,
I've carried you on my back for years.

When you died, I fled into the ritual
of life-preserving memory.
I thought: as long as there's blood
on the kitchen floor,
life is possible.

And when the casket was there smelling wonderful,
like blackness and sorrow and many relatives,
I knew it was empty or full of stones.
For you were gone,
you were pulling all our legs.

And later I invented all kinds of stories.
You were abducted, robbed of all your senses . . .
But one day you will appear
finally to set me free, since

I haven't buried you father
I've carried you on my back for years.

My father let his blood flow for years

    Lut de Block

My father let his blood flow for years.
Stirring it up is my life's work. I wash
the spatters from his boots, but shiver
from the resin that clings halfway. He lives

again more than ever. His blood creeps
slowly in me. I feel it adhering; listen to
the muffled drone of the axe. The healing
cleaving and hacking at the all too blunt grief.


Translated by Kendall Dunkelberg