Kein Vöglein
While the coffin rests on rollers
a lifetime’s words and movements shuffle in
seeded like the muted wood
of crematorium stalls. What used to be a body
stood above the dockside forty years ago
and looked out over slate and martyrdom.
A page hardly yet inscribed,
a soul trolleyed out of nothingness
to compass further nothingness -
blandly absurd, to be at an end
but never to have known the start,
no whisper of heavenly death,
no pandering, .no pardon,
preposterous assurance
that ceasing to be anywhere
will have a resonance.
Those who mourn may hope to hear
how such a going brings words to them,
the ridiculous rephrasing of a memory,
parents, schooldays, blind-alley obligations
of the flesh, an adolescent paucity
of inclination. But of the real voice
of love, the catechism of desire,
nothing remains but a stale caesura of the air.
We have heard that solace comes internally,
listening in the dark to our own blood,
knowing the road which everyone will tread,
a chant for unction and forgiveness.
What do we think is being said,
what news of hope for us?
A neap, a nothing,
not a dicky bird.
Page(s) 80
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