Requiem for Alexander Buzo

 The row of camphor laurels by

the post office has been cut down. Now vacant sky

is leaning over the windowless rear wall

of the supermarket opposite; the street

is suffused with a sweet

medicinal aroma that recalls

in all of these sunlight-mottled details

—the drawn curtains, the rumpled bedclothes, a pillow

awkwardly slanted below

the painted bedboard—a long-lost childhood sickroom.

Yet do not try to compare

that room to a head without hair.

 I am forced to consider the end

of a most particular friend.

 The smell of camphor filling the air like a steam

infusion; camphor and jasmine mingled into steam

which hovers over roof-tiles angled off from the sun;

moss on the tiles, and fungus on tree-bark which could seem

like an accident victim’s neck-brace; vines tangled

over branches the way intravenous

tubes are entwined with a patient’s limbs;

algae on lawns which appear gangrenous—

 everywhere there are things

in the process of being devoured by other

living things, and the presence…