My Father's Body
First they take it away,
for now the body belongs to the state.
They open it
to see what may have killed it,
and the body had arteriosclerosis
in its heart, for this was an inside job.
Now someone must identify the body
so that the sate may have a name
for what it will give away,
and the funeral people come in a stark car
shaped like a coffin with a hood
and take the body away,
for now it belongs to the funeral people
and the body's family buys it back,
through it lies in a box at the crematorium
while the mourners travel and convene.
Then they bring the body to the chapel,
as they call it,
of the crematorium,
and the body lies in its box
while the mourners enter and sit
and stare at the box, for the box
lies on a pedestal
where the altar would be
if this were a chapel.
A rectangular frame
with curtains at the sides
rises from the pedestal,
so that the box seems to fill
a small stage,
and the stage gives off the familiar
illusion of being a box
with one wall torn away
so that we may see into it,
but it's filled with a box
we can't see into.
There's music on tape
and a man in a robe
speaks for a while and I speak
for a while and then there's a prayer
and then we mourners can hear the whir
of a small motor and curtains slide
across the stage. At least for today,
I think, this is the stage
that all the world is,
and another motor hums on
and we mourners realize that behind
the curtains the body is being lowered,
not like Don Giovanni to the flames
but without flourish or song
or the comforts of elaborate plot,
to the basement of the crematorium,
to the mercies of the gas jets
and the balm of the conveyor belt.
The ashes will be scattered,
says a hushed man in a mute suit,
in the Garden of Remembrance,
which is out back.
And what's left of a mild, democratic man
will sift in a heap
with the residue of others,
for now they all belong to time.
William Matthews
Posted over on the Writer's Almanac
"My Father's Body" by William Matthews, from Search Party: Collected Poems.
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