20151018 (memorials)

It’s a patent tautology that 

Funerals are for the living 

You can’t hurt the dead your

Praise will fall on deaf ears

The rituals are for you since

You hear the bells toll unlike

The unknowns of war or the

Frozen homeless whose deaths

Went unattended unnoticed who

Are simply found when the front

Moves and the farmers return or

When spring arrives and the snow

Melts away hopefully there 

Are clues surviving dog tags 

Welfare cards dental records

Shreds of uniform medals of

Rank archeologists can detect the

Last meals from frozen guts not 

Much else if many have died their

Clothes and skin destroyed by

Napalm science is making strides

In identifying corpses but wartime

And social services might not have 

The budgets I imagine the best these

Get is a respectful burial I know

Some in good shape serve as cadavers

In medical studies at the burial site

For these dismembered unknowns

The medical students yearly hold

A non-denominational service of

Recognition for their posthumous

Sacrifice I can’t say whether cards

Are sent to known families who make

Such surrenders the ethics of using

A corpse can get complicated but

The punishments are less 

For abuse of the dead than 

For assault on the living

Recent discovery of an unknown 

Group of  hominids in South Africa 

Who sort of buried their dead deep

In a cave perhaps to spare the 

Corpses being eaten by predators

A sign of primitive human grief  

Effects of our words of the dead

Will root or fade in us who hear 

Them they might alter or confirm

Our impression of the deceased

We go away thinking the more often

The less of the one who is no more

Our cultures do their best to provide

Comfort assurance that our tragic

Inexplicable loss served for good

In a greater scheme for those who

Don’t believe find some heroism

In the life for believers recall

Ancient promises that this too shall

Pass somehow in the vaguely

Defined great by and by all our

Questions will be answered we shall

Finally meet know and be satisfied

Only then can we bear the grief

Of someone become nothing

c. J.S.Manista, 2015