[LIVE MUSIC PLAYING]
(SINGING IN MAJOR KEY) Clear stars afoam
on a black wave, a cold night.
We step, we step from the old porch
by ones and twos over yards blue by ice during the viewing.
(SINGING IN MINOR KEY) How quickly
the family turns to itself with grief, and how torn away.
Ice flecks in the cones of each car's headlamps,
pulling out on the journey.
So soon, the city, the trees gone by in a blur.
[LOW VIOLA NOTES]
We are part and parcel of a Great Recession.
[HIGH, EERIE NOTES REPEATING]
(SINGING IN MINOR KEY) Souls in sequence,
bearing our dead on our backs, like relic radiation
from creation's first blaze.
Each of us flung off like froth, scorching to ice
down the long highway out of the darkness, into the dark.