The Quiet Transvestite in Spring

My sixty year old neighbour is re-arranging the times:

wearing his dove tweed with faun trousers,

he mops the cemetery wall with turpentine.

It's grown something more malign than fire lichen—

Cocksuker, Go Home. He rubs at their poor spelling

until it clouds and fades to a pearl grey

like the satin slip and bra he will lift from his sister's

dresser drawer to wear down to Stoke Woods tomorrow

where first snow drops have begun to flower.

The quiet transvestite knows there are crueller things

in April than hyacinth and desire. Transformation

is a tricky thing and though he has prayed and wept,

wept and prayed he cannot be sure the surgeon's steel will heal,

still my neighbour believes the dead will rise one day

their hair let down, the sun turned to their faces.