Allen Ginsberg

The dead
                    the ones we loved
                                                    I think
civilize Death
                    like an advance team
                                                    to settle
the place
                    for our arrival
                                                    You
and Ted
                    my father and Archie
                                                    his cousin
who handed me
                    poems
                                                    when I was young
and didn't know
                    what a poet was
                                                    what a price comes along
with delight
                    Oh, sing a song then
                                                    the dead civilize
Death for us
                    suspended here in space
                                                    and time
anxious to get on
                    with our lives
                                                    hardly having time
for such thoughts
                    until, say, Allen
                                                    gets taken across
the threshold
                    that deep voice
                                                    over the abyss
of the two decades
                    between us
                                                    and now this