DEATH AND TAXES
It was as if she’d died in paperwork.
The pension fund to close. Some creditors,
their final bills. Running accounts
to be reined in, their gallop stopped.
No matter which way you cut it,
bureaucracy attends the dead.
I read somewhere how they do it in the Deccan,
in India. The old stumbling off into the stony hills
taking their last rest under the beating sun,
letting the wild beasts sort their bones.
Not our tradition. It wouldn’t be allowed. Besides,
where in the Chilterns
could a dying person hide?
So here’s my mother on het final day.
An oxygen mask, six patients in a ward -
a screen drawn round her bed.
She smiles bleakly to help me feel at ease.
Fear in her eyes. Her final words,
whispered in my ear,
’How warm your hand is.’
And all at once there are documents to sign,
lawyer’s fees to be paid, while the inland revenue
pours its requirements like wet cement
into the void the loved one leaves behind.
Published first in ‘New and Selected Poems (1966-2020)’ - Grey Suit Editions.
Donald Gardner, poet and translator, was born in London. He studied in Oxford and Bologna and lived in New York in the mid-sixties and travelled extensively in Mexico and Nicaragua. He began writing in the early 60s and is known for his presentations of his own poetry. His first live reading was at the Poetry Project, New York, in 1965 and in 1967, he took the stage at the East Village Theatre, in the company of Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and others for an audience of 2000. His first collection of poetry, Peace Feelers, was published in London by Café Books and a second collection, For the Flames (Fulcrum),followed in 1974.
On emigrating to the Netherlands in 1979, he made a number of performance pieces, based on his own poetry, most notably Chicken with Madness, a dance-performance, directed by the Italian choreographer, Patrizia Filia. It was presented inLondon, Amsterdam and New York. Returning to more formal poetry, he published How to Get the Most out of your Jet Lag (New Haven, Ct., 2001) and The Wolf Inside (Hearing Eye, 2014). His New and Selected Poems (1966-2020), appeared with Grey Suit Editions in 2021.
Gardner was originally a translator of Latin American writers: The Sun Stone by Octavio Paz and Zero Hour by Ernesto Cardenal. He is the translator, in collaboration with the author, of Three Trapped Tigers by the Cuban novelist, Guillermo Cabrera Infante. (Of this book, Salman Rushdie wrote: ‘I don’t know why any human beings should wish to attempt a task as difficult as this – perhaps because it was there.’) A translator of many Dutch and Flemish poets, he won the Vondel Prize in 2015 for his translations of Remco Campert, In those Days (Shoestring Press). Recently he published a collection of Maria Barnas’s poetry, Night Boat and other Poems (Shearsman Books, 2025). His collection of translations of Stefan Hertmans’ poetry, Goya as Dog, will appear early in 2026, also with Shearsman.
Edit: Benne wrote this about some of Donald’s ‘New and Selected Poems (1966-2020)’ in one of our feature articles!