Here

On the day after you died
my mother heard your voice
call her name;
sitting in the garden
I felt, for the first time
in my life, tranquillity.
By the fifth day
we had begun to know you
as an absence,
exhaustion catching us
as we moved
backwards towards
subtle amnesias,
more startled
rememberings.
That afternoon in the garden
told me there are no
questions or answers,
presences or absences,
that there is no
death or life.
Who you were, or are,
retains all its force
of mystery, father:
now a voice in the soul
I learn to know you
a little better.