Burning the dead

 I would that the river flow gently,
Asleep within its sylvan robe,
Seeking the sea in tranquility,
Carrying nothing as it flows
Across the meadow of reminiscence.

Bluestem and sedge, beebalm and aster,
Around the meadow the blossoms sing
A bright kathisma of little Psalms
Drawn from some fecund prairie Psalter,
In praise of nothing so much as being.

But in the meadow, they are burning the dead.

In the meadow the twilight people
Are burning the dead; crushing the skulls,
Casting the ordure into the breeze
To be carried away to the sea,
Obscuring the blessed memory,
The image hidden in the blood,
In a riotous fog of dust and ashes.

At the river’s mouth I would take my stand,
On the firm shore of compacted dreams
Carried away in the downstream years,
At the beach where the children trample
The detritus of the memories
Of the smoldering ashes of the dead.

The children are insensible
Of passion crushed beneath them,
Until in their generation they face the fire.

Everything returns to earth.
It is a mystery.

September, 2022