Burying Friends

BURYING friends is not a pomp,

Not, indeed, Roman:

Lacking the monument,

Heroic stone;

Nor is it an obscuring parasol,

The pad of customary gloves and cries

And a black leather mourning-carriage

Hung between death and the beholder's eyes.

This little bin of cancelled flesh

Strode the earth once,

Rubbed against men—

But that's all done.

A gentle elegy, a tear or two,

May charm the grave-diggers, no doubt,

But nothing can count to these incongrous ruins.

Their commercial value is not worth speaking about.

Only it seems not a burial

Of irrelevant sods,

But a lopped member

From this my body;

Almost, in fact, a tiny amputation,

A paring of biography, thrown in there.

And he has thieved his own life away

And something from mine. Farewell, thou pilferer!