FUNERAL FRIENDS                                                 

It feels right to share at funerals: we walk

Slowly to our seats and breath the peace of a

quiet togetherness of friends and lovers, of

blood and others who, sometime, were touched,

perhaps just gently brushed, by the warmth of

that body now cold, neutralised by a

careful arrangement of face and limbs

folded flat in that box (that’s surely too small);

the pall bearers, all, unsteady on feet that

shine uniform black, like their

neat black cravats.

 

Eyes cast round the last room of farewells –

otherwise they fill with tears too soon –

eyes that say I’m with you in your pain,

faced with that box about to disappear; no

question of any fear in saying, silently, I see the

hole left in your heart and will fill it with my love for

her, who they say lives on in all of us. And I am

ready for you to rap on my door, come inside and,

for so long as you feel alone, it’s your home, stay.

Soft words before usual rituals: let us sing, let us pray,

let the band play.

 

I like us to sing, despite the quite unreachable height of

most of the notes; our grief-squeezed chests want to

rise up and proclaim our denial of any sombre end, to

send the message loud and clear there will be no

void, no eternal fire. We all know that we stretch

out our minds in the sleep of resting limbs; just

extend from there: she will share her forever thoughts from

where she finds her forever peace, her place in the sun.

She can wear her best white blouse, her hair undone,

falling to her waist, why not? She is free,

her cares have gone.

 

Is there a right age to leave this stage, for the

last grains of sand to slide into the lower chamber of

life’s inscrutable measure, of which we know nought?

Kings have sought to claim it, tame it, stem the flow –

though to no avail; there are higher magistrates of our

next, if any, steps; where to, we must guess. You in the box,

you understand. And the men (not all five feet ten), back again,

hoist you up on padded shoulders, totter a little, then

shuffle towards the outside, where confused tears follow;

though you smile at the sobs of the earthbound, slip

through us and go.