Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

All the people who cared for you were in that church.
All radios were tuned to your frequency.
Foreshortened, your coffin lay in the chancel
on a utilitarian stainless-steel trolley
owned by the undertaker. Bowls colleagues
were your bearers; they wheeled the exhibit in
past tight-lipped mourners, all of whom
tried to imagine you, feet towards Jerusalem
three thousand miles away. Family were segregated
from friends like Jew from Palestinian.
We were united in grief. The priest had words
to place on your life like an invisible shroud.
Two hymns. Textbook prayers. An address,
refreshing in its understatement, by your son-in-law
who, I thought, resembled Al Pacino
in his well-cut suit, slicked-back hair, heavy eyes.
Pontypool, Monmouthshire: your resting-place
had no royal fanfares, no press photographers.
The Establishment ignored you. You were a nonperson.
The history books will never tell us you lived.
This poem cannot balance that weight
of official indifference, but I know less worthy corpses
have made the headlines. Mervyn, you were
a good man. Elvis used to visit the Memphis morgue
at night to gaze at the cadavers. He was addicted
to sex and gluttony. He was a legend, while you
inexplicably missed out. Croesyceiliog Crematorium
took your body from the funeral cortège
an hour later. We watched as curtains carefully
enfolded you with mechanical precision on the bier,
shielding from our gaze your oak-effect chrysalis.
We departed wordlessly, slightly envious
that you had touched home base first, wondering
how different it would be when our turn came
and how long it would take others to move beyond
the loss of our overwhelming specialness.