WEBVTT

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The last of these poems deals
with our final encounter

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which is, of course,
the extinction

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of the self, personal failure.

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And this poem is about a
very close friend of mine

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who died in County
Wexford in Ireland.

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And we've given the
usual funeral observance

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that any family which thinks
a great deal of itself

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gives to a representative.

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In other words, the
office for the dead

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was amplified by the
maximum number of curates

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that the family could
actually pay for,

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which is quite an
enormous number of souls.

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And these trooped
out onto the altar.

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It's a normal custom
and it puts something

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useful into the pockets
of the underpaid curates.

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It also adds not a little to
the horror of the occasion

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for those who are
closely confirmed.

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"Office for the Dead.

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The grief chewers
enter, their shoes

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hard on the marble in white
lace and black skirts,

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books held to their loins.

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A silver pot tosses
in its chains

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as they assemble about the
coffin, heavy under its cloth,

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and begin.

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Back and forth, each
side in nasal unison

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against the other, their
voices grind across her body.

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We watch, kneeling like
children and shrink

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as the church Latin chews our
different losses into one.

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All but certain
images of our pain

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that will not in
the course process

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pass to the cloth
and hidden boards

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to their peace in the shroud.

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But delay still real--

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high, thin shoulders,
eyes boring out

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of the dusk, wistful
misshapenedness, a stripped,

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dazzling mouth.

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Her frown as she takes the
candle pushed into her hands

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in the last crisis propped
up, dying with worry.

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Sanctus.

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We listened with bowed heads
to the thrash of chains,

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measuring the silence.

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The pot gasps in its
smoke, an animal of metal

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dragging itself and breathing."

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