At the Elegists’ Ball

Carolyn Oliver

Only the ghosts dance.

Embracing their unfinished

leisure, they waltz with

inflated stateliness

or in formless glee careen

about the deck.

A few prefer the stern

its haze of myrrh, engines

churning out an eau

de nil glow that disbands

to curve its own horizon.

They do not speak.

Silent too, the elegists

like diligent wallflowers

mark the manners

in which disembodiment

couples to animation.

Ravenous for the telling

detail, so vigilant are they

the cakes go untasted

the wine unspilled

the orchestra unheeded.

Over and over

the third cellist strokes

a lost low note

for the ghost of the whale

impaled on the ferry’s prow.

CAROLYN OLIVER is the author of Whale Garden (River River Books, forthcoming 2027), The Alcestis Machine (Acre, 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks.  carolynoliver.net