Funeral In 1963
Funeral in 1963
Beveled dusty cracked glass shielding Mother Mary enthroned,
Amidst flying angelic devotions atop whipped clouds of icy air,
Enslaved by an antique miracle made manifest in stained blood,
With silent invisible memorized prayers uttered in ancient Latin refrains,
Bowed before upright holy statues and a gold-encrusted grand altar,
He stood back-turned under a dead Jesus hiding his whispering sanctified face,
And the mysterious movements of his ten pious anointing fingers;
As with an airy fountain, he hosed Unction’s graces to the stone seekers,
Bestowing divine mercies by sealed envelope and a black vestment,
The lofty partial indulgences, the immaculate plenary indulgences,
Abundantly delivered and received using withy baskets and black beads.
Hollow dry penances offered up in a confessing private darkness of sorrow,
Within the squeezing superior stares of the priestly knot and the white Alb,
Altar boys on knees beckoning the impulsive turning of the holy human heart;
The struggled speaking of final toxic words on a red bleeding gurney;
Unsaid rosaries and scapular penances finding rusted, grinding precisions;
Broken trust and scarred faith wilting within clay idols and bloody crosses.
There is imminent death in the still waiting, there is red agony without the pain.
Black funeral wallowing within the hushed bereaved church at noon tide in 1963,
Sunken gray corpse of a woman serene, reposing waxlike in her beige groping coffin;
Grieving-suited witnesses and black-devouring shades standing wooden in dreadful silence,
Wondering when it will be their turn, their moment, to jump from this terrified earth,
These undead survivors, these breathing refugees of Unction’s graces,
Remembering now, their concealed matinee kissing games at the seedy Pillbox.
Copyright ©
Stark Hunter
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