The last of these poems deals with our final encounter
which is, of course, the extinction
of the self, personal failure.
And this poem is about a very close friend of mine
who died in County Wexford in Ireland.
And we've given the usual funeral observance
that any family which thinks a great deal of itself
gives to a representative.
In other words, the office for the dead
was amplified by the maximum number of curates
that the family could actually pay for,
which is quite an enormous number of souls.
And these trooped out onto the altar.
It's a normal custom and it puts something
useful into the pockets of the underpaid curates.
It also adds not a little to the horror of the occasion
for those who are closely confirmed.
"Office for the Dead.
The grief chewers enter, their shoes
hard on the marble in white lace and black skirts,
books held to their loins.
A silver pot tosses in its chains
as they assemble about the coffin, heavy under its cloth,
and begin.
Back and forth, each side in nasal unison
against the other, their voices grind across her body.
We watch, kneeling like children and shrink
as the church Latin chews our different losses into one.
All but certain images of our pain
that will not in the course process
pass to the cloth and hidden boards
to their peace in the shroud.
But delay still real--
high, thin shoulders, eyes boring out
of the dusk, wistful misshapenedness, a stripped,
dazzling mouth.
Her frown as she takes the candle pushed into her hands
in the last crisis propped up, dying with worry.
Sanctus.
We listened with bowed heads to the thrash of chains,
measuring the silence.
The pot gasps in its smoke, an animal of metal
dragging itself and breathing."