Photos from the post-funeral poem ceremony - for Merlin, Madhu, and Eleanor. MERLIN, YESTERDAY - A BURIAL SONG I wish I took that photograph. I wish I sunk my teeth into that plum and gently drew, into the space around my tender-longing tongue, the juices of a future tree-- cradled, wrapped in the fruit-flesh of its own mothers milk. But I did not take. I just gave myself to the ceremony. And so, friends, I cannot give you what I have taken; Yet I will give you what I have given myself. * I saw --dead, and frozen in the rigours of mortis-- Merlin. Companion of Madhu, the honey cat, Merlin himself the heaviest silver I have ever known. Merlin belonged to a woman --Eleanor. I saw her too. I allowed my body to walk over. I allowed my body to know the reverence --of course-- of death on the side of the road. Eleanor had brought Merlins plastic cat carrier, in which to bring the body home. However, in his death, Merlin was too big. His corpse was stretched out in the full magnificent stride of a feline pharaoh-- sure of his path. Merlin strode into his death-moment with a conviction grander than the indignity proposed by plastic. And so, I was needed; to carry Merlin home. * Are you going to bury him in your backgarden? I will return; For grief is not something we do alone. * When I returned I met Madhu, Merlins mead. And Eleanor told me, she and he would sleep in a ball every night. I looked Madhu in the barely open, trembling blue eyes, around which she wrenched her entire face I watched her arch back, down-- in broken surrender; Allowing her chin to roll up to the sky and mouth to open, just: I cannot describe the sound I heard. * We dug a hole for Merlin, and then we dug it bigger; so he could walk there In the full spread-out glory he demanded of his death, And his thereafter-- in our hands. Women were there, and they brought flowers: purple, orange, green. Brown-read Devon earth; Merlins fur-- a bronze-spattered ivory. I brought three plums, and we placed one under his chin one under his heart and one at the back of his head --a triangle of you, dear, are here. My plan was that we could each take a bite of the plums, a celebration of the juice and joy, bed-fellow of this very death. But I was not hungry then; and so the un-tasted plums. * Madhu came to the open grave, slowly ---so very slowly. That sound. And her bending in close, to see for the last time her Merlin, dashed the first dust across the grave. And while we were filling it in, I watched her: And she was smelling flowers; tiny yellow flowers. I did not know cats smelled flowers --how incredible. * At the end, I went to pick those very Madhu-smelled flowers, for to place across --as yellow complement and completion-- the purple-dressed grave-mound. And what I there saw upon those flowers was a scattering of Merlins silver hair, shed who-knows-when-ago. Ah-- so she was not smelling the flowers; or at least-- not the flowers alone; not the flowers alone. * Merlin, may you dwell evermore in all manner of Grace --my brother. And Madhu, I see you there; stricken. I too long for the juice of those three plums. For the captured image of a grave beauty, before hardly dreamed-of. And yet, I salivate now as I remember then. Does my body know any difference? Does my body know any difference?
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 01:02:53 +0000
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